In this two-hour weekly tutorial, students will be introduced to fundamentals of academic writing, reading, and research. Topics include: English mechanics and rhetoric; close reading; essay structure; thesis statements; strategies for argumentation; supporting a thesis with evidence; research skills; evaluating and incorporating secondary sources; MLA citation; and technical elements of research essays.

Note: Students must receive a grade of at least 70 in the Writing Tutorial before they can register for Writing Proseminar. In the case of receiving less than a 70, students must repeat the Writing Tutorial.

* This guideline applies to students starting in the 2017/18 academic year.

In this two-hour weekly tutorial, students will be introduced to fundamentals of academic writing, reading, and research. Topics include: English mechanics and rhetoric; close reading; essay structure; thesis statements; strategies for argumentation; supporting a thesis with evidence; research skills; evaluating and incorporating secondary sources; MLA citation; and technical elements of research essays.

Note: Students must receive a grade of at least 70 in the Writing Tutorial before they can register for Writing Proseminar. In the case of receiving less than a 70, students must repeat the Writing Tutorial.

* This guideline applies to students starting in the 2017/18 academic year.

0626-1141-02

תרגיל כתיבה

Writing Tutorial

מר כהן עמרי

תרגיל

רוזנברג

205

ה'

1400-1200

סמ' א'

In this two-hour weekly tutorial, students will be introduced to fundamentals of academic writing, reading, and research. Topics include: English mechanics and rhetoric; close reading; essay structure; thesis statements; strategies for argumentation; supporting a thesis with evidence; research skills; evaluating and incorporating secondary sources; MLA citation; and technical elements of research essays.

Note: Students must receive a grade of at least 70 in the Writing Tutorial before they can register for Writing Proseminar. In the case of receiving less than a 70, students must repeat the Writing Tutorial.

* This guideline applies to students starting in the 2017/18 academic year.

In this two-hour weekly tutorial, students will be introduced to fundamentals of academic writing, reading, and research. Topics include: English mechanics and rhetoric; close reading; essay structure; thesis statements; strategies for argumentation; supporting a thesis with evidence; research skills; evaluating and incorporating secondary sources; MLA citation; and technical elements of research essays.

Note: Students must receive a grade of at least 70 in the Writing Tutorial before they can register for Writing Proseminar. In the case of receiving less than a 70, students must repeat the Writing Tutorial.

* This guideline applies to students starting in the 2017/18 academic year.

0626-1141-03

תרגיל כתיבה

Writing Tutorial

מר הריס קית

תרגיל

רוזנברג

103

ה'

1600-1400

סמ' א'

In this two-hour weekly tutorial, students will be introduced to fundamentals of academic writing, reading, and research. Topics include: English mechanics and rhetoric; close reading; essay structure; thesis statements; strategies for argumentation; supporting a thesis with evidence; research skills; evaluating and incorporating secondary sources; MLA citation; and technical elements of research essays.

Note: Students must receive a grade of at least 70 in the Writing Tutorial before they can register for Writing Proseminar. In the case of receiving less than a 70, students must repeat the Writing Tutorial.

* This guideline applies to students starting in the 2017/18 academic year.

In this two-hour weekly tutorial, students will be introduced to fundamentals of academic writing, reading, and research. Topics include: English mechanics and rhetoric; close reading; essay structure; thesis statements; strategies for argumentation; supporting a thesis with evidence; research skills; evaluating and incorporating secondary sources; MLA citation; and technical elements of research essays.

Note: Students must receive a grade of at least 70 in the Writing Tutorial before they can register for Writing Proseminar. In the case of receiving less than a 70, students must repeat the Writing Tutorial.

* This guideline applies to students starting in the 2017/18 academic year.

0626-1141-04

תרגיל כתיבה

Writing Tutorial

גב' קרולין ענת

תרגיל

רוזנברג

105

ב'

1600-1400

סמ' ב'

In this two-hour weekly tutorial, students will be introduced to fundamentals of academic writing, reading, and research. Topics include: English mechanics and rhetoric; close reading; essay structure; thesis statements; strategies for argumentation; supporting a thesis with evidence; research skills; evaluating and incorporating secondary sources; MLA citation; and technical elements of research essays.

Note: Students must receive a grade of at least 70 in the Writing Tutorial before they can register for Writing Proseminar. In the case of receiving less than a 70, students must repeat the Writing Tutorial.

* This guideline applies to students starting in the 2017/18 academic year.

In this two-hour weekly tutorial, students will be introduced to fundamentals of academic writing, reading, and research. Topics include: English mechanics and rhetoric; close reading; essay structure; thesis statements; strategies for argumentation; supporting a thesis with evidence; research skills; evaluating and incorporating secondary sources; MLA citation; and technical elements of research essays.

Note: Students must receive a grade of at least 70 in the Writing Tutorial before they can register for Writing Proseminar. In the case of receiving less than a 70, students must repeat the Writing Tutorial.

* This guideline applies to students starting in the 2017/18 academic year.

0626-1141-05

תרגיל כתיבה

Writing Tutorial

מר כהן עמרי

תרגיל

רוזנברג

105

ה'

1600-1400

סמ' ב'

In this two-hour weekly tutorial, students will be introduced to fundamentals of academic writing, reading, and research. Topics include: English mechanics and rhetoric; close reading; essay structure; thesis statements; strategies for argumentation; supporting a thesis with evidence; research skills; evaluating and incorporating secondary sources; MLA citation; and technical elements of research essays.

Note: Students must receive a grade of at least 70 in the Writing Tutorial before they can register for Writing Proseminar. In the case of receiving less than a 70, students must repeat the Writing Tutorial.

* This guideline applies to students starting in the 2017/18 academic year.

In this two-hour weekly tutorial, students will be introduced to fundamentals of academic writing, reading, and research. Topics include: English mechanics and rhetoric; close reading; essay structure; thesis statements; strategies for argumentation; supporting a thesis with evidence; research skills; evaluating and incorporating secondary sources; MLA citation; and technical elements of research essays.

Note: Students must receive a grade of at least 70 in the Writing Tutorial before they can register for Writing Proseminar. In the case of receiving less than a 70, students must repeat the Writing Tutorial.

* This guideline applies to students starting in the 2017/18 academic year.

0626-1190-01

תרגיל כתיבה בסיסי

Remedia Writting Tutorial

ד"ר שוחט בגון רובין

תרגיל

גילמן

317

ב'

1400-1200

סמ' א'

Writing Proseminar Course Description

Proseminar is a course in research writing, which focuses on works of literature, as well as criticism. Students engage in close reading, analysis, reading secondary sources, and integrating them into a well-formulated argument. Students read a primary text, and practice responding to them in class, and writing about them both informally and formally. Students also produce a research paper related to themes or questions evoked by the literature. This course is comprised of in class work, conferences, collaborative learning activities, and peer review.

Writing Proseminar Course Description

Proseminar is a course in research writing, which focuses on works of literature, as well as criticism. Students engage in close reading, analysis, reading secondary sources, and integrating them into a well-formulated argument. Students read a primary text, and practice responding to them in class, and writing about them both informally and formally. Students also produce a research paper related to themes or questions evoked by the literature. This course is comprised of in class work, conferences, collaborative learning activities, and peer review.

0626-1208-01

ניתוח סיפורת

Narrative Analysis

פרופ גומל אילנה

שיעור

גילמן

144

ד'

1400-1200

סמ' א'

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

001

א'

1400-1200

סמ' א'

Narrative Analysis Prof Elana Gomel

Basic Course Spring semester egomel@post.tau.ac.il

A selection of short stories and theoretical texts will be made available online.

Description:

We live our lives surrounded by stories. Novels, movies, video games, and newscasts are narratives, and so are biographies and autobiographies. The concept of narrative is crucial not only to literature but also to psychology, history and political science. The theory of narrative is, therefore, of primary importance in literary and cultural studies today.

In this course we will learn about the basic and fundamental concepts of narrative theory, such as author, reader, plot, setting, character, and point of view. We will study the classic narratological theories of Viktor Shklovsky, Gerard Genette, Seymour Chatman and others. But we will also discuss the recent and exciting innovations in narratology, connected to the rise of the Internet, the changing media landscape and the influence of cognitive and evolutionary science. The aim of the course is to equip you with the necessary analytical tools for understanding both literary and non-literary narratives.

The course will involve reading a selection of theoretical texts paired with short stories. A detailed syllabus will be posted before the beginning of the semester.

Goals:

Familiarity with all the major theoretical approaches to narrative

Ability to apply the theoretical tools provided by the course to a variety of narrative texts

Independent and original thinking about narrative

Requirements:

Active independent work, quizzes, two short papers, a midterm and a final exam.

Resources:

Online resources will be provided

Evaluation:

The final grade will be calculated on the following basis: final take-home exam – 50%, the papers – 30%, quizzes and class participation – 2-%

Narrative Analysis Prof Elana Gomel

Basic Course Spring semester egomel@post.tau.ac.il

A selection of short stories and theoretical texts will be made available online.

Description:

We live our lives surrounded by stories. Novels, movies, video games, and newscasts are narratives, and so are biographies and autobiographies. The concept of narrative is crucial not only to literature but also to psychology, history and political science. The theory of narrative is, therefore, of primary importance in literary and cultural studies today.

In this course we will learn about the basic and fundamental concepts of narrative theory, such as author, reader, plot, setting, character, and point of view. We will study the classic narratological theories of Viktor Shklovsky, Gerard Genette, Seymour Chatman and others. But we will also discuss the recent and exciting innovations in narratology, connected to the rise of the Internet, the changing media landscape and the influence of cognitive and evolutionary science. The aim of the course is to equip you with the necessary analytical tools for understanding both literary and non-literary narratives.

The course will involve reading a selection of theoretical texts paired with short stories. A detailed syllabus will be posted before the beginning of the semester.

Goals:

Familiarity with all the major theoretical approaches to narrative

Ability to apply the theoretical tools provided by the course to a variety of narrative texts

Independent and original thinking about narrative

Requirements:

Active independent work, quizzes, two short papers, a midterm and a final exam.

Resources:

Online resources will be provided

Evaluation:

The final grade will be calculated on the following basis: final take-home exam – 50%, the papers – 30%, quizzes and class participation – 2-%

We live our lives surrounded by stories. Novels, movies, video games, and newscasts are narratives, and so are biographies and autobiographies. The concept of narrative is crucial not only to literature but also to psychology, history and political science. The theory of narrative is, therefore, of primary importance in literary and cultural studies today.

In this course we will learn about the basic and fundamental concepts of narrative theory, such as author, reader, plot, setting, character, and point of view. We will study the classic narratological theories of Viktor Shklovsky, Gerard Genette, Seymour Chatman and others. But we will also discuss the recent and exciting innovations in narratology, connected to the rise of the Internet, the changing media landscape and the influence of cognitive and evolutionary science. The aim of the course is to equip you with the necessary analytical tools for understanding both literary and non-literary narratives.

The course will involve reading a selection of theoretical texts paired with short stories. A detailed syllabus will be posted before the beginning of the semester.

Goals:

Familiarity with all the major theoretical approaches to narrative

Ability to apply the theoretical tools provided by the course to a variety of narrative texts

Independent and original thinking about narrative

Requirements:

Active independent work, quizzes, two short papers, a midterm and a final exam.

Resources:

Online resources will be provided

Evaluation:

The final grade will be calculated on the following basis: final take-home exam – 50%, the papers – 30%, quizzes and class participation – 2-%

0626-1217-01

ניתוח שירה

Poetry Analysis

ד"ר טרטקובסקי רועי

שיעור

גילמן

223

ד'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

001

א'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

Poetry Analysis (Theory Course)

ניתוח שירה

Though some poems are very long, a poem is typically a fairly small piece of text that manages to achieve a great deal in spite of its brevity. There is thus an interesting disparity between poetry’s material minimalism and conceptual and perceptual magnitude. Why is it, or how is it, that a poem grabs us or asks for our attention in the ways that it does, if it does? This course will provide basic terminology and techniques for discussing, understanding and misunderstanding poetry’s modes of operation. Through readings of poems from classical and contemporary English and American poetry, we will study such subjects as imagery, meter, figurative language, speaker, and poetic sound.

Readings: Texts will be provided on the course website. Students are expected to have the poems with them at all times in class.

Poetry Analysis (Theory Course)

ניתוח שירה

Though some poems are very long, a poem is typically a fairly small piece of text that manages to achieve a great deal in spite of its brevity. There is thus an interesting disparity between poetry’s material minimalism and conceptual and perceptual magnitude. Why is it, or how is it, that a poem grabs us or asks for our attention in the ways that it does, if it does? This course will provide basic terminology and techniques for discussing, understanding and misunderstanding poetry’s modes of operation. Through readings of poems from classical and contemporary English and American poetry, we will study such subjects as imagery, meter, figurative language, speaker, and poetic sound.

Readings: Texts will be provided on the course website. Students are expected to have the poems with them at all times in class.

The purpose of this introductory course is to familiarize students with the central figures, major ideas and dominant intellectual movements that had shaped the study of literature. The history of the field will be presented as a series of intellectual conflicts in which competing sets of ideas about the nature of literature, language, meaning, selfhood and truth clash and inform one another. We shall read texts by Plato and Aristotle, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Matthew Arnold and Oscar Wilde, Marx, Freud, Derrida, Foucault and other 20th-century theorists.

The purpose of this introductory course is to familiarize students with the central figures, major ideas and dominant intellectual movements that had shaped the study of literature. The history of the field will be presented as a series of intellectual conflicts in which competing sets of ideas about the nature of literature, language, meaning, selfhood and truth clash and inform one another. We shall read texts by Plato and Aristotle, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Matthew Arnold and Oscar Wilde, Marx, Freud, Derrida, Foucault and other 20th-century theorists.

Requirements: reading, attendance, midterm exam, final exam

0626-1278-01

מבוא לתרבות אנגליה א'

Introduction to British Culture i

ד"ר סטבסקי יהונתן יוסף

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

001

ב'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

001

ה'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

Introduction to British Culture I / מבוא לתרבות אנגליה א'

Dr. Jonathan Stavsky

Course Description

What did the English language sound like over a thousand years ago? Why is it so different today? Has English culture always enjoyed the same global prestige? What are its sources? How did it come to assert itself? What was it like to be a woman in the fourteenth century? Is Shakespeare really the greatest love poet? Can texts written in the remote past speak to present readers? These are some of the questions asked, and partly answered, by this survey of English literature from its earliest medieval records to the Renaissance and beyond. It aims to familiarize you with some of the best poetry and drama ever produced in England and to give you the tools to understand, enjoy, and take further courses on the works you will study. By the end of the semester, you should be able to identify, analyze, contextualize, and trace the development of their forms, themes, and ideologies.

Introduction to British Culture I / מבוא לתרבות אנגליה א'

Dr. Jonathan Stavsky

Course Description

What did the English language sound like over a thousand years ago? Why is it so different today? Has English culture always enjoyed the same global prestige? What are its sources? How did it come to assert itself? What was it like to be a woman in the fourteenth century? Is Shakespeare really the greatest love poet? Can texts written in the remote past speak to present readers? These are some of the questions asked, and partly answered, by this survey of English literature from its earliest medieval records to the Renaissance and beyond. It aims to familiarize you with some of the best poetry and drama ever produced in England and to give you the tools to understand, enjoy, and take further courses on the works you will study. By the end of the semester, you should be able to identify, analyze, contextualize, and trace the development of their forms, themes, and ideologies.

0626-1279-01

מבוא לתרבות אנגליה ב'

Introduction to British Culture 2

ד"ר גרנאי אימי

שיעור

גילמן

282

ב'

1200-1000

סמ' ב'

שיעור

גילמן

282

ה'

1200-1000

סמ' ב'

Introduction to British Culture

מבוא לתרבות אנגליה - II

Basic Course

Monday-Thursday 10:00-12:00

Semester II

Dr. Amy Garnai

Course Description

This course presents a survey of English literature and culture from the beginning of the eighteenth century until early twentieth-century modernism. We will read texts by the following authors: Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Dr. Johnson, William Blake, Charlotte Smith, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Lord Byron, PB Shelley, John Keats, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Gaskell, WB Yeats, Joseph Conrad, Oscar Wilde, T.S. Elliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. These include short novellas, extracts from longer prose works, short stories and both short and longer poems. In doing so, we will examine literary periods such as the eighteenth century, Romanticism, the Victorian period and Modernism, the literary and cultural production that defined them and the historical developments that shaped and informed them. As such, we will reflect upon the interrelations between text, context and history as they appear in the canonical texts of British literature.

The lessons will be based on assigned texts that will be read before class. All texts will be available to download from the course website or through links to outside sources. The students may, of course, purchase used copies of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th volume, “The Major Authors”, from which most of the works are taken, or borrow from the library copies of individual texts.

Attendance is compulsory for this course, as per University regulations. Failure to attend regularly will result in the lowering of the class grade or in disqualification from taking the exams.

Assessment:

33% - midterm exam

66% - final exam

Introduction to British Culture

מבוא לתרבות אנגליה - II

Basic Course

Monday-Thursday 10:00-12:00

Semester II

Dr. Amy Garnai

Course Description

This course presents a survey of English literature and culture from the beginning of the eighteenth century until early twentieth-century modernism. We will read texts by the following authors: Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Dr. Johnson, William Blake, Charlotte Smith, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Lord Byron, PB Shelley, John Keats, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Gaskell, WB Yeats, Joseph Conrad, Oscar Wilde, T.S. Elliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. These include short novellas, extracts from longer prose works, short stories and both short and longer poems. In doing so, we will examine literary periods such as the eighteenth century, Romanticism, the Victorian period and Modernism, the literary and cultural production that defined them and the historical developments that shaped and informed them. As such, we will reflect upon the interrelations between text, context and history as they appear in the canonical texts of British literature.

The lessons will be based on assigned texts that will be read before class. All texts will be available to download from the course website or through links to outside sources. The students may, of course, purchase used copies of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th volume, “The Major Authors”, from which most of the works are taken, or borrow from the library copies of individual texts.

Attendance is compulsory for this course, as per University regulations. Failure to attend regularly will result in the lowering of the class grade or in disqualification from taking the exams.

Assessment:

33% - midterm exam

66% - final exam

0626-1500-01

מבוא לתרבות אמריקה

Introduction to American Culture

פרופ שמיר מלאת

שיעור

גילמן

223

ב'

1400-1200

סמ' ב'

שיעור

גילמן

223

ה'

1400-1200

סמ' ב'

Introduction to american culture description

The purpose of this course is to examine the development of a distinct American cultural discourse from the Colonial period to the end of the 20th century. The texts read in class offer a variety of genres and voices representing the different facets of American cultural production.

TEXTS: Selected texts from a variety of authors, poets, and essayists. All texts will be made available in electronic form.

In addition we will read wide selections from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. It’s a good idea to purchase these two books in any edition.

REQUIREMENTS: there will be a written assignment, midterm quizzes, and a final exam.

Introduction to american culture description

The purpose of this course is to examine the development of a distinct American cultural discourse from the Colonial period to the end of the 20th century. The texts read in class offer a variety of genres and voices representing the different facets of American cultural production.

TEXTS: Selected texts from a variety of authors, poets, and essayists. All texts will be made available in electronic form.

In addition we will read wide selections from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. It’s a good idea to purchase these two books in any edition.

REQUIREMENTS: there will be a written assignment, midterm quizzes, and a final exam.

0626-1511-01

מה הם לימודים אמריקניים?

What is American Studies?

ד"ר פרומר יואב

שיעור

רוזנברג

211

ג'

1400-1200

סמ' א'

What does America stand for? What does it mean to be an American? And subsequently, who “is” considered an American – and who is not? These are the core questions – as timely as ever – that we will seek to explore during the semester. This course will introduce students to American Studies, as both an academic discipline that we study as well as a contested idea to be debated. It surveys the increasingly broadening fields of study that fall under the rubric of American Studies – literature, history, social sciences, cinema, music and art – and teaches students ‘how to’ conduct research by applying or combining them. At heart, the course seeks to give students a “taste” of the excitingly diverse, and constantly evolving, flavors of American Studies in order to help them locate a particular area/topic/era/methodology that they might wish to pursue in a more advanced manner in their later studies.

What does America stand for? What does it mean to be an American? And subsequently, who “is” considered an American – and who is not? These are the core questions – as timely as ever – that we will seek to explore during the semester. This course will introduce students to American Studies, as both an academic discipline that we study as well as a contested idea to be debated. It surveys the increasingly broadening fields of study that fall under the rubric of American Studies – literature, history, social sciences, cinema, music and art – and teaches students ‘how to’ conduct research by applying or combining them. At heart, the course seeks to give students a “taste” of the excitingly diverse, and constantly evolving, flavors of American Studies in order to help them locate a particular area/topic/era/methodology that they might wish to pursue in a more advanced manner in their later studies.

The course will offer a critical reading of American history, from the onset of the European conquest to the outbreak of the Civil War. Central topics will include the formation of the slave system, the outbreak of revolution, the framing of the Constitution, the birth of capitalism, and Western expansion. We will examine the United States not as a land of unlimited opportunity, but as a contested terrain of ethnic, political, and social struggle.

0626-2064-01

פרוסמינר בכתיבה

Writing Proseminar

גב' קיסין שכטר אנה

פרוסמינר

רוזנברג

211

ב'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

פרוסמינר

רוזנברג

211

ה'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

Writing Proseminar - 626206401, 626206402, 626206405, 626206406.

Anna Kissin Shechter

Writing Proseminar is an intensive academic writing workshop designed to prepare you for writing academic papers, such as seminar papers. You will be required to produce a research paper of about 2500 words analyzing a literary work – a novel or a play -assigned in class. In the process of working on this project, you will practice and rehearse specific skills, including close analysis of a literary text, problematizing, defining, contextualizing, organizing; you will practice argumentative skills and learn to perfect your control of rhetoric, vocabulary and style. You will hand in written assignments twice a week, hand in a partial first draft midway through the semester and then keep revising and expanding that draft until it is complete.* Your final paper, as well as your course portfolio of assignments, is due at the end of the semester.

*Important: Writing Proseminar places a high demand on your time and energy – an average of 6-8 hours per week for your reading, writing, and library research in addition to class time. The key to success in proseminar is to make it your high priority for the semester.

* Important: attendance is mandatory and must start with the first meeting of the Proseminar.

Writing Proseminar - 626206401, 626206402, 626206405, 626206406.

Anna Kissin Shechter

Writing Proseminar is an intensive academic writing workshop designed to prepare you for writing academic papers, such as seminar papers. You will be required to produce a research paper of about 2500 words analyzing a literary work – a novel or a play -assigned in class. In the process of working on this project, you will practice and rehearse specific skills, including close analysis of a literary text, problematizing, defining, contextualizing, organizing; you will practice argumentative skills and learn to perfect your control of rhetoric, vocabulary and style. You will hand in written assignments twice a week, hand in a partial first draft midway through the semester and then keep revising and expanding that draft until it is complete.* Your final paper, as well as your course portfolio of assignments, is due at the end of the semester.

*Important: Writing Proseminar places a high demand on your time and energy – an average of 6-8 hours per week for your reading, writing, and library research in addition to class time. The key to success in proseminar is to make it your high priority for the semester.

* Important: attendance is mandatory and must start with the first meeting of the Proseminar.

0626-2064-02

פרוסמינר בכתיבה

Writing Proseminar

גב' קיסין שכטר אנה

פרוסמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

101

ב'

1400-1200

סמ' א'

פרוסמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

103

ה'

1400-1200

סמ' א'

Writing Proseminar - 626206401, 626206402, 626206405, 626206406.

Anna Kissin Shechter

Writing Proseminar is an intensive academic writing workshop designed to prepare you for writing academic papers, such as seminar papers. You will be required to produce a research paper of about 2500 words analyzing a literary work – a novel or a play -assigned in class. In the process of working on this project, you will practice and rehearse specific skills, including close analysis of a literary text, problematizing, defining, contextualizing, organizing; you will practice argumentative skills and learn to perfect your control of rhetoric, vocabulary and style. You will hand in written assignments twice a week, hand in a partial first draft midway through the semester and then keep revising and expanding that draft until it is complete.* Your final paper, as well as your course portfolio of assignments, is due at the end of the semester.

*Important: Writing Proseminar places a high demand on your time and energy – an average of 6-8 hours per week for your reading, writing, and library research in addition to class time. The key to success in proseminar is to make it your high priority for the semester.

* Important: attendance is mandatory and must start with the first meeting of the Proseminar.

Writing Proseminar - 626206401, 626206402, 626206405, 626206406.

Anna Kissin Shechter

Writing Proseminar is an intensive academic writing workshop designed to prepare you for writing academic papers, such as seminar papers. You will be required to produce a research paper of about 2500 words analyzing a literary work – a novel or a play -assigned in class. In the process of working on this project, you will practice and rehearse specific skills, including close analysis of a literary text, problematizing, defining, contextualizing, organizing; you will practice argumentative skills and learn to perfect your control of rhetoric, vocabulary and style. You will hand in written assignments twice a week, hand in a partial first draft midway through the semester and then keep revising and expanding that draft until it is complete.* Your final paper, as well as your course portfolio of assignments, is due at the end of the semester.

*Important: Writing Proseminar places a high demand on your time and energy – an average of 6-8 hours per week for your reading, writing, and library research in addition to class time. The key to success in proseminar is to make it your high priority for the semester.

* Important: attendance is mandatory and must start with the first meeting of the Proseminar.

.

0626-2064-03

פרוסמינר בכתיבה

Writing Proseminar

ד"ר שוחט בגון רובין

פרוסמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

105

א'

1400-1200

סמ' א'

פרוסמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

105

ד'

1400-1200

סמ' א'

Writing Proseminar is an intensive academic writing workshop designed to prepare you for writing academic papers, such as seminar papers. You will be required to produce a research paper of about 2500 words analyzing a literary work – a novel or a play -assigned in class. In the process of working on this project, you will practice and rehearse specific skills, including close analysis of a literary text, problematizing, defining, contextualizing, organizing; you will practice argumentative skills and learn to perfect your control of rhetoric, vocabulary and style. You will hand in written assignments twice a week, hand in a partial first draft midway through the semester and then keep revising and expanding that draft until it is complete.* Your final paper, as well as your course portfolio of assignments, is due at the end of the semester.

*Important: Writing Proseminar places a high demand on your time and energy – an average of 6-8 hours per week for your reading, writing, and library research in addition to class time. The key to success in proseminar is to make it your high priority for the semester.

* Important: attendance is mandatory and must start with the first meeting of the Proseminar.

Writing Proseminar is an intensive academic writing workshop designed to prepare you for writing academic papers, such as seminar papers. You will be required to produce a research paper of about 2500 words analyzing a literary work – a novel or a play -assigned in class. In the process of working on this project, you will practice and rehearse specific skills, including close analysis of a literary text, problematizing, defining, contextualizing, organizing; you will practice argumentative skills and learn to perfect your control of rhetoric, vocabulary and style. You will hand in written assignments twice a week, hand in a partial first draft midway through the semester and then keep revising and expanding that draft until it is complete.* Your final paper, as well as your course portfolio of assignments, is due at the end of the semester.

*Important: Writing Proseminar places a high demand on your time and energy – an average of 6-8 hours per week for your reading, writing, and library research in addition to class time. The key to success in proseminar is to make it your high priority for the semester.

* Important: attendance is mandatory and must start with the first meeting of the Proseminar.

0626-2064-04

פרוסמינר בכתיבה

Writing Proseminar

ד"ר שוחט בגון רובין

פרוסמינר

רוזנברג

211

א'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

פרוסמינר

רוזנברג

211

ד'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

Writing Proseminar is an intensive academic writing workshop designed to prepare you for writing academic papers, such as seminar papers. You will be required to produce a research paper of about 2500 words analyzing a literary work – a novel or a play -assigned in class. In the process of working on this project, you will practice and rehearse specific skills, including close analysis of a literary text, problematizing, defining, contextualizing, organizing; you will practice argumentative skills and learn to perfect your control of rhetoric, vocabulary and style. You will hand in written assignments twice a week, hand in a partial first draft midway through the semester and then keep revising and expanding that draft until it is complete.* Your final paper, as well as your course portfolio of assignments, is due at the end of the semester.

*Important: Writing Proseminar places a high demand on your time and energy – an average of 6-8 hours per week for your reading, writing, and library research in addition to class time. The key to success in proseminar is to make it your high priority for the semester.

* Important: attendance is mandatory and must start with the first meeting of the Proseminar.

Writing Proseminar is an intensive academic writing workshop designed to prepare you for writing academic papers, such as seminar papers. You will be required to produce a research paper of about 2500 words analyzing a literary work – a novel or a play -assigned in class. In the process of working on this project, you will practice and rehearse specific skills, including close analysis of a literary text, problematizing, defining, contextualizing, organizing; you will practice argumentative skills and learn to perfect your control of rhetoric, vocabulary and style. You will hand in written assignments twice a week, hand in a partial first draft midway through the semester and then keep revising and expanding that draft until it is complete.* Your final paper, as well as your course portfolio of assignments, is due at the end of the semester.

*Important: Writing Proseminar places a high demand on your time and energy – an average of 6-8 hours per week for your reading, writing, and library research in addition to class time. The key to success in proseminar is to make it your high priority for the semester.

* Important: attendance is mandatory and must start with the first meeting of the Proseminar.

0626-2064-05

פרוסמינר בכתיבה

Writing Proseminar

גב' קיסין שכטר אנה

פרוסמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

105

ב'

1600-1400

סמ' ב'

פרוסמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

105

ה'

1600-1400

סמ' ב'

Writing Proseminar - 626206401, 626206402, 626206405, 626206406.

Anna Kissin Shechter

Writing Proseminar is an intensive academic writing workshop designed to prepare you for writing academic papers, such as seminar papers. You will be required to produce a research paper of about 2500 words analyzing a literary work – a novel or a play -assigned in class. In the process of working on this project, you will practice and rehearse specific skills, including close analysis of a literary text, problematizing, defining, contextualizing, organizing; you will practice argumentative skills and learn to perfect your control of rhetoric, vocabulary and style. You will hand in written assignments twice a week, hand in a partial first draft midway through the semester and then keep revising and expanding that draft until it is complete.* Your final paper, as well as your course portfolio of assignments, is due at the end of the semester.

*Important: Writing Proseminar places a high demand on your time and energy – an average of 6-8 hours per week for your reading, writing, and library research in addition to class time. The key to success in proseminar is to make it your high priority for the semester.

* Important: attendance is mandatory and must start with the first meeting of the Proseminar.

Writing Proseminar - 626206401, 626206402, 626206405, 626206406.

Anna Kissin Shechter

Writing Proseminar is an intensive academic writing workshop designed to prepare you for writing academic papers, such as seminar papers. You will be required to produce a research paper of about 2500 words analyzing a literary work – a novel or a play -assigned in class. In the process of working on this project, you will practice and rehearse specific skills, including close analysis of a literary text, problematizing, defining, contextualizing, organizing; you will practice argumentative skills and learn to perfect your control of rhetoric, vocabulary and style. You will hand in written assignments twice a week, hand in a partial first draft midway through the semester and then keep revising and expanding that draft until it is complete.* Your final paper, as well as your course portfolio of assignments, is due at the end of the semester.

*Important: Writing Proseminar places a high demand on your time and energy – an average of 6-8 hours per week for your reading, writing, and library research in addition to class time. The key to success in proseminar is to make it your high priority for the semester.

* Important: attendance is mandatory and must start with the first meeting of the Proseminar.

0626-2336-01

ספרות אמריקנית בת זמננו

Contemporary American Fiction

ד"ר מאורר יעל

שיעור

גילמן

280

ג'

1600-1400

סמ' ב'

Contemporary American Fiction

In this course we will read short stories by prominent contemporary American writers. The short story in America has held a prominent place in the American literary tradition. It has become a "national form" around the 1820's and 1830's, when the Americans "virtually invented what has come to be called 'the short story', in its modern literary form" (The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story, 1).

The short story format allows for concise investigation into the human psyche. The short story writer's art "tries to convey the 'point' of a story: that moment of understanding or cognition to which we grasp not so much 'what the writer was getting at', as what the story may get at in its collaboration with the mind of the reader reading" (6).

The authors whose works we'll read are have mastered this form. We'll read texts by John Cheever and Raymond Carver who have perfected the form and hardly wrote any other forms of fiction. We'll also read stories by Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Dorothy Parker and Joyce Carol Oates to show in what ways women writers' grasp of the American psyche may differ from their male counterparts and in what ways they meet to create what might be termed an American mode of writing.

Stephen King, well known for his lengthy novels, will be represented here by a shorter piece of fiction, a novella which was adapted to one of the best loved movies of all time The Shawshank Redemption. As King humorously puts it, the novella is an odd "country" situated between the short story and the novel: "The borders of the country between these two more orderly regions are ill-defined, but at some point, the writer wakes up with alarm and realizes that he's come or is coming to a really terrible place, an anarchy-ridden literary banana republic called the 'novella'". King's Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is a masterful example of the way this hybrid form can become a nuanced meditation on the themes that are at the heart of King's work and of the American literary tradition: masculinity, freedom, religious zeal and its harmful side effects, and the belief in the ability of the human spirit to triumph over overwhelming odds. This is why I chose to end with this piece and its filmic adaptation.

Course requirements:

Attendance and participation: 15%

In class midterm: 15%

Final paper: 70%

Contemporary American Fiction

In this course we will read short stories by prominent contemporary American writers. The short story in America has held a prominent place in the American literary tradition. It has become a "national form" around the 1820's and 1830's, when the Americans "virtually invented what has come to be called 'the short story', in its modern literary form" (The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story, 1).

The short story format allows for concise investigation into the human psyche. The short story writer's art "tries to convey the 'point' of a story: that moment of understanding or cognition to which we grasp not so much 'what the writer was getting at', as what the story may get at in its collaboration with the mind of the reader reading" (6).

The authors whose works we'll read are have mastered this form. We'll read texts by John Cheever and Raymond Carver who have perfected the form and hardly wrote any other forms of fiction. We'll also read stories by Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Dorothy Parker and Joyce Carol Oates to show in what ways women writers' grasp of the American psyche may differ from their male counterparts and in what ways they meet to create what might be termed an American mode of writing.

Stephen King, well known for his lengthy novels, will be represented here by a shorter piece of fiction, a novella which was adapted to one of the best loved movies of all time The Shawshank Redemption. As King humorously puts it, the novella is an odd "country" situated between the short story and the novel: "The borders of the country between these two more orderly regions are ill-defined, but at some point, the writer wakes up with alarm and realizes that he's come or is coming to a really terrible place, an anarchy-ridden literary banana republic called the 'novella'". King's Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is a masterful example of the way this hybrid form can become a nuanced meditation on the themes that are at the heart of King's work and of the American literary tradition: masculinity, freedom, religious zeal and its harmful side effects, and the belief in the ability of the human spirit to triumph over overwhelming odds. This is why I chose to end with this piece and its filmic adaptation.

Course requirements:

Attendance and participation: 15%

In class midterm: 15%

Final paper: 70%

0626-2372-01

מוסריות ומפלצותיות: עקרונות מרכזיים בתרבות הוויקטוריאנית

Morals and Monsters: Key Concepts in Victorian Culture

גב' קורן קאוק מירב

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

103

א'

1400-1200

סמ' א'

Morals and Monsters: Key Concepts in Victorian Culture (626237201)

Reflecting an abundant array of anxieties and conflicts, Victorian monsters were not always visually fantastic. In many Victorian narratives monstrosity presents itself through the practice of dubious morality as well as through the connections it exhibits with the spatial/temporal axis of the fictional world within which it exists. The course will focus on the examination of instances of monstrosity (both physical and moral), and the ways in which they project Victorian epistemologies of gender, ethics, and social order. To facilitate a fruitful discussion, issues of monstrosity and morality within narratives will be presented in connection with key concepts in Victorian culture: domestic vs public, country versus city, and occult vs science. We will read and analyze Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel Uncle Silas (1864) and Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897), as well as short stories by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Charles Dickens.

Reflecting an abundant array of anxieties and conflicts, Victorian monsters were not always visually fantastic. In many Victorian narratives monstrosity presents itself through the practice of dubious morality as well as through the connections it exhibits with the spatial/temporal axis of the fictional world within which it exists. The course will focus on the examination of instances of monstrosity (both physical and moral), and the ways in which they project Victorian epistemologies of gender, ethics, and social order. To facilitate a fruitful discussion, issues of monstrosity and morality within narratives will be presented in connection with key concepts in Victorian culture: domestic vs public, country versus city, and occult vs science. We will read and analyze Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel Uncle Silas (1864) and Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897), as well as short stories by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Charles Dickens.

Both Oedipus Tyrannus and Hamlet begin with a rotting state, on the heels of a crime. Oedipus’s Thebes "reeks with incense" and "rings with prayers for health and sighs of woe", while in Hamlet’s Elsinore, one of the guards famously tells us that "there is something rotten in the state of Denmark". Hamlet and Oedipus, it seems, have received a dubious inheritance; an inheritance that requires of them to pay, one way or another. And indeed, both characters try to escape the destiny their inheritance inscribes for them, only to eventually find themselves paying with their very flesh. However, Oedipus’s daughter, who insists on the ceremonial burial rights of her lost brother, offers us another possible trajectory of payment, one that does not necessarily involve a rotten state.

With the orientation of the psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan, we will set to discover what the poets may teach us about the debt each human subject is born into, as, in the words of Freud, "the mortal vehicle of a (possibly) immortal substance – like the inheritor of an entailed property, who is the temporary holder of an estate which survives him".

Readings will include:

Sophocles: OedipusTyrannus, Antigone

Shakespeare: Hamlet

Freud: The Rat Man, "Mourning and Melancholy"

Lacan: excerpts from "Psychoanalysis and Its Teaching", "The Splendor of Antigone", "Antigone between Two Deaths"

Derrida: Specters of Marx: The State of Debt

Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok: "The Illness of Mourning and the Fantasy of the Exquisite Corpse"

Requirements: active participation, regular attendance, a midterm paper and a final paper

On the Estate of Debt: From Oedipus to Hamlet

Both Oedipus Tyrannus and Hamlet begin with a rotting state, on the heels of a crime. Oedipus’s Thebes "reeks with incense" and "rings with prayers for health and sighs of woe", while in Hamlet’s Elsinore, one of the guards famously tells us that "there is something rotten in the state of Denmark". Hamlet and Oedipus, it seems, have received a dubious inheritance; an inheritance that requires of them to pay, one way or another. And indeed, both characters try to escape the destiny their inheritance inscribes for them, only to eventually find themselves paying with their very flesh. However, Oedipus’s daughter, who insists on the ceremonial burial rights of her lost brother, offers us another possible trajectory of payment, one that does not necessarily involve a rotten state.

With the orientation of the psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan, we will set to discover what the poets may teach us about the debt each human subject is born into, as, in the words of Freud, "the mortal vehicle of a (possibly) immortal substance – like the inheritor of an entailed property, who is the temporary holder of an estate which survives him".

Readings will include:

Sophocles: OedipusTyrannus, Antigone

Shakespeare: Hamlet

Freud: The Rat Man, "Mourning and Melancholy"

Lacan: excerpts from "Psychoanalysis and Its Teaching", "The Splendor of Antigone", "Antigone between Two Deaths"

Derrida: Specters of Marx: The State of Debt

Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok: "The Illness of Mourning and the Fantasy of the Exquisite Corpse"

Requirements: active participation, regular attendance, a midterm paper and a final paper

0626-2659-01

תרגום והדמיון הספרותי

Translation and the Literary Imagination

גב' קליין מיה

שיעור

גילמן

306

ד'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

Translation and the Literary Imagination

תרגום בראי הספרות

Maya Klein

Recent developments in translation theory are rich ground for some of the most interesting work in literary studies. Various approaches to translation are far from new, they have been circulating from the outset of the practice of translation, however they are now no longer limited to translators adding their reflections on a published work, and have expanded into fields of study that foreground and reformulate the key role of translation‒‒and of the translator. Theoretical frameworks such as postcolonial studies, feminism and Marxism among others have been applied to the study of translation, and as the world currently faces the largest refugee and migration population since WWII, it seems particularly timely that translation, as in “carrying across”, will further develop and gain momentum.

This course will examine 20-21st century literature and film that feature translation and translators and/or exhibit a performance of translation. We will be reading two novellas by writers who are also translators: Cynthia Ozick’s “Envy: Or Yiddish in America” (1969) and J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (1980). We will be discussing translation as theme and performance and the relevance of issues such as intertextuality, assimilation, gender, the body and pain. The course will also map out key concepts in the discourse of translation such as “fidelity” “invisibility” “foreignization” and “untranslatability” and consider their relevance for the field of literature. Our reading list will also include theoretical texts by: Vladimir Nabokov, Walter Benjamin, Octavio Paz, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Rebecca Walkowitz, Lawrence Venuti, Susan Bassnett and Anton Shammas.

We will be reading J.M.Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. We reccomend ordering the book in advance.

Course requirements include a midterm exam and a final paper.

Translation and the Literary Imagination

תרגום בראי הספרות

Maya Klein

Recent developments in translation theory are rich ground for some of the most interesting work in literary studies. Various approaches to translation are far from new, they have been circulating from the outset of the practice of translation, however they are now no longer limited to translators adding their reflections on a published work, and have expanded into fields of study that foreground and reformulate the key role of translation‒‒and of the translator. Theoretical frameworks such as postcolonial studies, feminism and Marxism among others have been applied to the study of translation, and as the world currently faces the largest refugee and migration population since WWII, it seems particularly timely that translation, as in “carrying across”, will further develop and gain momentum.

This course will examine 20-21st century literature and film that feature translation and translators and/or exhibit a performance of translation. We will be reading two novellas by writers who are also translators: Cynthia Ozick’s “Envy: Or Yiddish in America” (1969) and J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (1980). We will be discussing translation as theme and performance and the relevance of issues such as intertextuality, assimilation, gender, the body and pain. The course will also map out key concepts in the discourse of translation such as “fidelity” “invisibility” “foreignization” and “untranslatability” and consider their relevance for the field of literature. Our reading list will also include theoretical texts by: Vladimir Nabokov, Walter Benjamin, Octavio Paz, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Rebecca Walkowitz, Lawrence Venuti, Susan Bassnett and Anton Shammas.

We will be reading J.M.Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. We reccomend ordering the book in advance.

0626-2660-01

ידע, מדע ומסורת ברומן של המאה השמונה עשרה

Knowledge Science and Tradition in the Long Eighteenth Century Novel

ד"ר בן טובים רון

שיעור

רוזנברג

002

א'

1600-1400

סמ' ב'

שיעור

רוזנברג

002

ד'

1600-1400

סמ' ב'

Knowledge, Science, and Tradition in the Long Eighteenth Century Novel

With the rise of the new sciences in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, British society, culture and literature, were forced to come to terms with new modes of knowing that had undermined a former world of tradition. The course will focus on the manner in which the debate between science and tradition influenced the literary production of the period. Course reading will include Jonathan Swift's "Battle of the Books" and Gulliver's Travels, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, along with a number of select shorter prose works and poetry.

Knowledge, Science, and Tradition in the Long Eighteenth Century Novel

With the rise of the new sciences in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, British society, culture and literature, were forced to come to terms with new modes of knowing that had undermined a former world of tradition. The course will focus on the manner in which the debate between science and tradition influenced the literary production of the period. Course reading will include Jonathan Swift's "Battle of the Books" and Gulliver's Travels, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, along with a number of select shorter prose works and poetry.

0626-2661-01

מדע בדיוני פוסט קולוניאלי

Postcolonial Science Fiction: the Empire Strikes Back

ד"ר מאורר יעל

שיעור

גילמן

305

ה'

1600-1400

סמ' א'

Postcolonial Science Fiction: The Empire Strikes Back

Dr. Yael Maurer

This course explores the intersection of two seemingly unrelated realms: postcolonial literature, specifically the literature produced during and after the British colonization of India by British colonizers and their postcolonial subjects in the former Empire, and science fiction, a fictional mode that explores "Other Worlds". Science fiction can be described as "speculative fiction". It is the story of "what if": What if we had discovered other worlds and inhabited them? What if aliens discovered us? In postcolonial fiction, the emphasis is on what happened in the past and how that history has left traces on the present. The questions posed by science fictional narratives reflect the colonial and postcolonial conditions in interesting ways.

What do science fiction and postcolonial fiction have in common? One answer would certainly be the figure of the "alien" and the "Other". As Jessica Langer demonstrates in her book Postcolonialism and Science Fiction, the "classic oppositional SF tropes of the grotesque bug-eyed alien bent on Earthly domination and the beautiful but empty planet, ripe for colonization" are the "twin myths" of both SF and colonialism.

In other words, SF and postcolonial fiction and theory are both structured around similar tropes. If we look at the genesis of the science fictional mode, we shall see it begins in the late 19th century at the height of the colonial project. As John Rieder points out in Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, "early science fiction lives and breathes in the atmosphere of colonial history and its discourses". We shall see how literary works written at the time reflect the fears surrounding the idea of colonial domination and the encounter with the "Other".

In this course, we'll focus on the links between the British Empire and the "other worlds" envisioned in science fictional texts. We'll begin in colonial times with H.G Wells, one of the "founding fathers" of the science fictional mode who explores the "war of the worlds" at the heart of colonial domination and science fictional imaginings of alien races. We then move to one of the most famous British science fiction writers, Arthur C. Clarke, to see how his stories from the 1950’s and onward examine the links between colonial expansion, spaces, and alterity. We end with the postcolonial reimagining of nation in Amitav Ghosh’s 1995 novel about the links between Empire, science, medicine, national identities and science fictional imaginings of alternate dimensions and alternative histories of nation and a 2011 British film which imagines an alien invasion in a housing estate in London.

Literary texts:

Arthur C. Clarke, “Trouble with the Natives”, “History Lesson”, “How We Went to Mars”, “The Parasite” and other stories if time permits

H.G. Wells, the War of the Worlds

H.G. Wells, the Island of Dr. Moreau

Amitav Ghosh, the Calcutta Chromosome

Film:

Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, director)

Major theoretical texts:

Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction John Rieder

Postcolonialism and Science Fiction Jessica Langer

Strange Encounters Sara Ahmed

The Postnational Fantasy Raja, Ellis and Nandi (Editors)

Science Fiction, Imperialism and the Third World Hoegland and Sarwal (Editors)

Requirements:

Attendance, participation and class presentations: 20%

In class midterm: 15%

Final paper (at home): 65%

Postcolonial Science Fiction: The Empire Strikes Back

Dr. Yael Maurer

This course explores the intersection of two seemingly unrelated realms: postcolonial literature, specifically the literature produced during and after the British colonization of India by British colonizers and their postcolonial subjects in the former Empire, and science fiction, a fictional mode that explores "Other Worlds". Science fiction can be described as "speculative fiction". It is the story of "what if": What if we had discovered other worlds and inhabited them? What if aliens discovered us? In postcolonial fiction, the emphasis is on what happened in the past and how that history has left traces on the present. The questions posed by science fictional narratives reflect the colonial and postcolonial conditions in interesting ways.

What do science fiction and postcolonial fiction have in common? One answer would certainly be the figure of the "alien" and the "Other". As Jessica Langer demonstrates in her book Postcolonialism and Science Fiction, the "classic oppositional SF tropes of the grotesque bug-eyed alien bent on Earthly domination and the beautiful but empty planet, ripe for colonization" are the "twin myths" of both SF and colonialism.

In other words, SF and postcolonial fiction and theory are both structured around similar tropes. If we look at the genesis of the science fictional mode, we shall see it begins in the late 19th century at the height of the colonial project. As John Rieder points out in Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, "early science fiction lives and breathes in the atmosphere of colonial history and its discourses". We shall see how literary works written at the time reflect the fears surrounding the idea of colonial domination and the encounter with the "Other".

In this course, we'll focus on the links between the British Empire and the "other worlds" envisioned in science fictional texts. We'll begin in colonial times with H.G Wells, one of the "founding fathers" of the science fictional mode who explores the "war of the worlds" at the heart of colonial domination and science fictional imaginings of alien races. We then move to one of the most famous British science fiction writers, Arthur C. Clarke, to see how his stories from the 1950’s and onward examine the links between colonial expansion, spaces, and alterity. We end with the postcolonial reimagining of nation in Amitav Ghosh’s 1995 novel about the links between Empire, science, medicine, national identities and science fictional imaginings of alternate dimensions and alternative histories of nation and a 2011 British film which imagines an alien invasion in a housing estate in London.

Literary texts:

Arthur C. Clarke, “Trouble with the Natives”, “History Lesson”, “How We Went to Mars”, “The Parasite” and other stories if time permits

H.G. Wells, the War of the Worlds

H.G. Wells, the Island of Dr. Moreau

Amitav Ghosh, the Calcutta Chromosome

Film:

Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, director)

Major theoretical texts:

Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction John Rieder

Postcolonialism and Science Fiction Jessica Langer

Strange Encounters Sara Ahmed

The Postnational Fantasy Raja, Ellis and Nandi (Editors)

Science Fiction, Imperialism and the Third World Hoegland and Sarwal (Editors)

The First Folio of Shakespeare’s collected plays published in 1623 lists ‘Histories’ as a distinct genre of drama, alongside ‘Tragedies and Comedies’. The division of plays under this new generic category implies, however, that Heminges and Condell (former actors in Shakespeare’s company who edited the volume) considered as ‘Histories’ only plays that deal with the English chronicles. A play such as Julius Caesar, for example, is listed as a tragedy. Indeed, much of Shakespeare’s early career as a playwright centred on dramatizing historical narratives gleaned primarily from the Tudor chronicle books of Hall and Holinshed, a genre which soon became Shakespeare’s hallmark. Starting in 1590 with a trilogy of plays centred on the Wars of the Roses of the previous century, and the reign of Henry VI, Shakespeare went on to perfect his poetic and dramaturgical art in delving deeper, and farther back into the collective English historical memory of his day. In doing so, he not only teased out the tragic and comic elements of Tudor historical narratives, but explored the very idea of ‘history’ itself, and its manifold political and cultural uses for those locked in a historical gaze within their own present moment. In this course we will explore Shakespeare’s treatment of history in his various chronicle plays while asking: what are the conceptual and theatrical connections between how Shakespeare understands history-making and history-writing with the role of theatre and drama in his own day? What are some of the wider national, political, and ultimately subjective implications of Shakespeare’s reimagination of historical epochs to his abiding preoccupation with questions about performance, moral and ethical agency, identity-formation and selfhood? How does Shakespeare navigate in these plays the fine line between censorship, propaganda and political criticism? And can it be said finally that in wanting to explore the root causes of human motives and action in a wider historical sense, Shakespeare discovered his great poetics of interiority of the human subject?

Primary texts: The course will focus on a close reading and discussion of the following plays (read in this sequence): Richard III, Richard II, 1 and 2 Henry IV, Julius Caesar and Henry VIII. * It is advisable to get hold of copies of the plays in advance of the course (buying online through websites like bookdespository.com is the cheapest and quickest option). The recommended edition is the Shakespeare Arden series. However, cheaper editions (which are less heavily annotated) are also available either through Penguin, the Shakespeare Folger Library, or similar publications. In any case, it is compulsory to read the plays before they are discussed in class and always to have a text in class for reference.

Requirements: Attendance in the course is compulsory. There will be a midterm exam (worth 30%), and a take-home final exam (70%).

The First Folio of Shakespeare’s collected plays published in 1623 lists ‘Histories’ as a distinct genre of drama, alongside ‘Tragedies and Comedies’. The division of plays under this new generic category implies, however, that Heminges and Condell (former actors in Shakespeare’s company who edited the volume) considered as ‘Histories’ only plays that deal with the English chronicles. A play such as Julius Caesar, for example, is listed as a tragedy. Indeed, much of Shakespeare’s early career as a playwright centred on dramatizing historical narratives gleaned primarily from the Tudor chronicle books of Hall and Holinshed, a genre which soon became Shakespeare’s hallmark. Starting in 1590 with a trilogy of plays centred on the Wars of the Roses of the previous century, and the reign of Henry VI, Shakespeare went on to perfect his poetic and dramaturgical art in delving deeper, and farther back into the collective English historical memory of his day. In doing so, he not only teased out the tragic and comic elements of Tudor historical narratives, but explored the very idea of ‘history’ itself, and its manifold political and cultural uses for those locked in a historical gaze within their own present moment. In this course we will explore Shakespeare’s treatment of history in his various chronicle plays while asking: what are the conceptual and theatrical connections between how Shakespeare understands history-making and history-writing with the role of theatre and drama in his own day? What are some of the wider national, political, and ultimately subjective implications of Shakespeare’s reimagination of historical epochs to his abiding preoccupation with questions about performance, moral and ethical agency, identity-formation and selfhood? How does Shakespeare navigate in these plays the fine line between censorship, propaganda and political criticism? And can it be said finally that in wanting to explore the root causes of human motives and action in a wider historical sense, Shakespeare discovered his great poetics of interiority of the human subject?

Primary texts: The course will focus on a close reading and discussion of the following plays (read in this sequence): Richard III, Richard II, 1 and 2 Henry IV, Julius Caesar and Henry VIII. * It is advisable to get hold of copies of the plays in advance of the course (buying online through websites like bookdespository.com is the cheapest and quickest option). The recommended edition is the Shakespeare Arden series. However, cheaper editions (which are less heavily annotated) are also available either through Penguin, the Shakespeare Folger Library, or similar publications. In any case, it is compulsory to read the plays before they are discussed in class and always to have a text in class for reference

0626-2922-01

ראליזם ונטורליזם אמריקני

American Realism and Naturalism

פרופ שמיר מלאת

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

103

ב'

1600-1400

סמ' א'

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

103

ה'

1600-1400

סמ' א'

American Realism and Naturalism - BA Advanced Course

The terms “Realism” and “Naturalism” are used in the context of American cultural history to describe the dominant literary styles of US fiction during the period between the Civil War and the beginning of the Twentieth Century. In this course we will analyze these two styles in relation to romanticism, the literary style that precedes realism and naturalism, and to modernism, which follows as a reaction to them. We will contextualize realism and naturalism in the social and political changes in the US in this period: the increasing rate of democracy and literacy, industrial and urban growth, technological developments, the rise in middle-class affluence and consumerism, and changes in the definitions of womanhood. Most importantly, we will read the works of some of the most celebrated novelists in America, including Henry James, Kate Chopin, and Theodore Dreiser.

The terms “Realism” and “Naturalism” are used in the context of American cultural history to describe the dominant literary styles of US fiction during the period between the Civil War and the beginning of the Twentieth Century. In this course we will analyze these two styles in relation to romanticism, the literary style that precedes realism and naturalism, and to modernism, which follows as a reaction to them. We will contextualize realism and naturalism in the social and political changes in the US in this period: the increasing rate of democracy and literacy, industrial and urban growth, technological developments, the rise in middle-class affluence and consumerism, and changes in the definitions of womanhood. Most importantly, we will read the works of some of the most celebrated novelists in America, including Henry James, Kate Chopin, and Theodore Dreiser.

Fairy tale is simultaneously an ancient and a modern literary genre. It originated in oral storytelling, thousands of years old. Yet the fairy tale also played an important role in the formation of European national cultures in the 18th and 19th century in France, Germany, Britain and Italy.

In this course we will discuss how the revival of fairy tales in Victorian England influenced, and interacted with, the emerging poetics of the realistic novel. On the surface, the two genres appear to be diametrically opposite. But we will see how the narrative motifs of fairy tale, including the convention of the happy ending, the romantic idea of marriage, gender stereotypes, and plot structures, appear in many ostensibly realistic Victorian novels. And so do the darker aspects of fairy tale, such as the intrusion of the supernatural into everyday life, randomness and inexplicability, and nonhuman characters (the fairy, the changeling). We will consider what fairy-tale motifs tell us about both Victorian culture and the history of the novel. The texts discussed include, but are not limited to, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and George MacDonald’s Lilith. A detailed syllabus will be posted before the beginning of the semester.

Requirements: class participation (mandatory), two papers, and the final.

Victorian Fairy Tales and the Realistic Novel

Core course in the novel and literary history

Prof. Elana Gomel

Fairy tale is simultaneously an ancient and a modern literary genre. It originated in oral storytelling, thousands of years old. Yet the fairy tale also played an important role in the formation of European national cultures in the 18th and 19th century in France, Germany, Britain and Italy.

In this course we will discuss how the revival of fairy tales in Victorian England influenced, and interacted with, the emerging poetics of the realistic novel. On the surface, the two genres appear to be diametrically opposite. But we will see how the narrative motifs of fairy tale, including the convention of the happy ending, the romantic idea of marriage, gender stereotypes, and plot structures, appear in many ostensibly realistic Victorian novels. And so do the darker aspects of fairy tale, such as the intrusion of the supernatural into everyday life, randomness and inexplicability, and nonhuman characters (the fairy, the changeling). We will consider what fairy-tale motifs tell us about both Victorian culture and the history of the novel. The texts discussed include, but are not limited to, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and George MacDonald’s Lilith. A detailed syllabus will be posted before the beginning of the semester.

Requirements: class participation (mandatory), two papers, and the final.

0626-2924-01

צ'וסר: יצירותיו המוקדמות וטרוילוס וקריסיידה

Chaucer: Early Works and Troilus and Criseyde

ד"ר סטבסקי יהונתן יוסף

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

102

ב'

1800-1600

סמ' א'

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

102

ה'

1800-1600

סמ' א'

Chaucer: Early Works and Troilus and Criseyde / צ'וסר: יצירותיו המוקדמות וטרוילוס וקריסיידה

Dr. Jonathan Stavsky

Course Description

Best known for writing the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer began his career as the author of experimental dream visions that probe the nature of love, loss, poetic fame, and worldly mutability. As his voice gained maturity, he embarked on his first major project: Troilus and Criseyde, the story of a tragic love affair that unfolds against the background of the Trojan War, which counts among the best long narrative poems in the English language. His next undertaking, the Legend of Good Women, is an unfinished collection of stories purposing—or purporting—to vindicate women from misogynist stereotypes.

This course is an opportunity to read all of these works and more from cover to cover, together with selected secondary sources demonstrating the major approaches that scholars have brought to bear on them. No prior knowledge of Chaucer’s language is required. However, all texts will be studied in the original, and you will quickly be expected to become proficient in the grammar, core vocabulary, and pronunciation of the London dialect of Middle English, the basis of Early Modern English. Students who successfully complete the requirements of this course should be able to analyze, contextualize, theorize, and savor Chaucer’s poetry. They will also be qualified to pursue advanced seminars on medieval literature.

Note: students enrolled in this course must first pass Introduction to British Culture I (or the old Introduction to British Culture offered until 2015–2016).

Chaucer: Early Works and Troilus and Criseyde / צ'וסר: יצירותיו המוקדמות וטרוילוס וקריסיידה

Dr. Jonathan Stavsky

Course Description

Best known for writing the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer began his career as the author of experimental dream visions that probe the nature of love, loss, poetic fame, and worldly mutability. As his voice gained maturity, he embarked on his first major project: Troilus and Criseyde, the story of a tragic love affair that unfolds against the background of the Trojan War, which counts among the best long narrative poems in the English language. His next undertaking, the Legend of Good Women, is an unfinished collection of stories purposing—or purporting—to vindicate women from misogynist stereotypes.

This course is an opportunity to read all of these works and more from cover to cover, together with selected secondary sources demonstrating the major approaches that scholars have brought to bear on them. No prior knowledge of Chaucer’s language is required. However, all texts will be studied in the original, and you will quickly be expected to become proficient in the grammar, core vocabulary, and pronunciation of the London dialect of Middle English, the basis of Early Modern English. Students who successfully complete the requirements of this course should be able to analyze, contextualize, theorize, and savor Chaucer’s poetry. They will also be qualified to pursue advanced seminars on medieval literature.

Note: students enrolled in this course must first pass Introduction to British Culture I (or the old Introduction to British Culture offered until 2015–2016).

0626-2925-01

תיאוריות של המסמן

Theories of the Signifier

פרופ זיסר שיר-לי

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

102

ב'

1200-1000

סמ' ב'

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

103

ה'

1200-1000

סמ' ב'

Theories of the Signifier – BA Core Course

The course is taught from a psychoanalytical Freudian-Lacanian position.

Words are the stuff of poetic language, what literature is made of. They are also the stuff of psychic life, the constituents of the unconscious. But what is the nature of words? How are words, components of the distinctly human phenomenon language is, related to the organism language affects? Philosophers and rhetoricians have grappled with this question since antiquity. So have, in modern times, linguists, literary theorists, and those whom Lacan teaches are the modern inheritors of the rhetors and the Sophists, ancient reflectors on the relation of the subject and the signifier, namely psychoanalysts. The course will review and discuss theories of the signifier from Plato’s Theaetetus, Aristotle’s Poetics, Rhetoric, and Sophistical Refutations, through those of Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, Martin Heidegger, Edward Sapir, Thomas Sebeok, Jacques Derrida, Freud and Lacan, as well as other psychoanalysts such as Sandor Ferenczi, Nicolas Abraham, and Michele Montrelay. Special emphasis will be given to the question of the intersection of the linguistic and the biological, the possible place of the organic in words and forms of conjunction of words which organize it.

The course is taught from a psychoanalytical Freudian-Lacanian position.

Words are the stuff of poetic language, what literature is made of. They are also the stuff of psychic life, the constituents of the unconscious. But what is the nature of words? How are words, components of the distinctly human phenomenon language is, related to the organism language affects? Philosophers and rhetoricians have grappled with this question since antiquity. So have, in modern times, linguists, literary theorists, and those whom Lacan teaches are the modern inheritors of the rhetors and the Sophists, ancient reflectors on the relation of the subject and the signifier, namely psychoanalysts. The course will review and discuss theories of the signifier from Plato’s Theaetetus, Aristotle’s Poetics, Rhetoric, and Sophistical Refutations, through those of Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, Martin Heidegger, Edward Sapir, Thomas Sebeok, Jacques Derrida, Freud and Lacan, as well as other psychoanalysts such as Sandor Ferenczi, Nicolas Abraham, and Michele Montrelay. Special emphasis will be given to the question of the intersection of the linguistic and the biological, the possible place of the organic in words and forms of conjunction of words which organize it.

The differences between Emily Dickinson and E.E. Cummings are evident (different centuries, different genders, different modes of publication and reception). And yet both share something which may be at least as important: both poets refuse to take linguistic and poetic givens as given. Dickinson’s use of the hymn stanza together with her cryptic imagery and use of the dash were as perplexing for her earlier readers as they are today. Cummings deviates from “normal” language systematically on every conceivable level, from capitalization to word order to arrangement on the page. In both cases, the poets create poetry in need of deciphering, a mission that is at once productive and deemed to fail. In this class we will read Dickinson and Cummings, together and separately, and also use their work to engage in larger questions about the special work that poetry is able to perform.

The differences between Emily Dickinson and E.E. Cummings are evident (different centuries, different genders, different modes of publication and reception). And yet both share something which may be at least as important: both poets refuse to take linguistic and poetic givens as given. Dickinson’s use of the hymn stanza together with her cryptic imagery and use of the dash were as perplexing for her earlier readers as they are today. Cummings deviates from “normal” language systematically on every conceivable level, from capitalization to word order to arrangement on the page. In both cases, the poets create poetry in need of deciphering, a mission that is at once productive and deemed to fail. In this class we will read Dickinson and Cummings, together and separately, and also use their work to engage in larger questions about the special work that poetry is able to perform.

0626-2927-01

דרמה אמריקנית מודרנית

Modern American Drama

גב' גדי שלהב

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

102

א'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

Modern American Drama

In the early 20th century, the American theatre underwent a process of transformation that changed its nature, proper themes and stylistic modes. A new generation of playwrights rebelled against the constraint of commercial melodrama and sought to portray American culture through the means of realism and expressionism, and a whole new set of characters and issues were introduced to the American stage. Playwrights such as Susan Glaspell, Eugene O'Neill, Lillian Hellman and Tennessee Williams played a major part in shaping the theatre's direction towards becoming a serious art form. This course offers readings from all four playwrights. We will discuss them in relation to their reception history, their creative process and their individual poetics and politics. We will examine their new innovative dramatic techniques, focusing on their attempt to break away from the world of 19th-century melodrama to the realms of realism and expressionism. We will also explore the relationship of dramatic themes in the larger context of American culture, and examine such issues as women's rights, the rise of the psychological self, massive industrialization and a new corporate order, and a variety of social power relations as they appear onstage as part of a public debate.

Modern American Drama

In the early 20th century, the American theatre underwent a process of transformation that changed its nature, proper themes and stylistic modes. A new generation of playwrights rebelled against the constraint of commercial melodrama and sought to portray American culture through the means of realism and expressionism, and a whole new set of characters and issues were introduced to the American stage. Playwrights such as Susan Glaspell, Eugene O'Neill, Lillian Hellman and Tennessee Williams played a major part in shaping the theatre's direction towards becoming a serious art form. This course offers readings from all four playwrights. We will discuss them in relation to their reception history, their creative process and their individual poetics and politics. We will examine their new innovative dramatic techniques, focusing on their attempt to break away from the world of 19th-century melodrama to the realms of realism and expressionism. We will also explore the relationship of dramatic themes in the larger context of American culture, and examine such issues as women's rights, the rise of the psychological self, massive industrialization and a new corporate order, and a variety of social power relations as they appear onstage as part of a public debate.

0626-2928-01

ספרות יהודית אמריקנית אחרי מל"הע ה - 2

Post Wwi II Jewish American Fiction

ד"ר גיל נעם

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

103

ג'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

Post World War II Jewish American Literature/

Dr. Noam Gil

The 1950s and 1960s are perceived as the golden years of Jewish fiction in America, when for the first time Jewish authors broke into the cultural mainstream. And yet, many texts by notable authors such as Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud and Grace Paley challenged their Jewish tradition and expressed a desire to transcend their own "marginal" identity into a broader universal sensibility. In this course we will discuss the way these authors engaged in establishing a new sense of self in America. It is a literary exploration that challenges not only issues of Jewish identity but prevalent perspectives concerning collective identity and their implication in Post Holocaust America.

We will explore novels and short stories by Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick.

Post World War II Jewish American Literature/

Dr. Noam Gil

The 1950s and 1960s are perceived as the golden years of Jewish fiction in America, when for the first time Jewish authors broke into the cultural mainstream. And yet, many texts by notable authors such as Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud and Grace Paley challenged their Jewish tradition and expressed a desire to transcend their own "marginal" identity into a broader universal sensibility. In this course we will discuss the way these authors engaged in establishing a new sense of self in America. It is a literary exploration that challenges not only issues of Jewish identity but prevalent perspectives concerning collective identity and their implication in Post Holocaust America.

We will explore novels and short stories by Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick.

0626-2930-01

ספרות אמריקנית של המאה ה 19

19th C. American Literature and History of the Book

ד"ר מרלוב מאיה

שיעור

גילמן

279

ג'

1400-1200

סמ' ב'

Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the History of the Book

Maya Merlob

2018

The history of the book is a relatively new field of studies which brings together a wide range of theoretical approaches to the production, consumption, and circulation of texts and, in a more recent development, their removal and disposal. With the book viewed as a thing, an object with a life of its own, scholars are beginning to pay attention to the various phases in a text’s ‘life’- birth, growth and death. Relying on this methodology, this course will explore texts produced in early America. We will ask ourselves how texts acquire cultural status in the new nation, how Americans are encouraged to participate in their production and consumption, and eventually we will delve into the particular ways in which textual meaning is discarded in the attempt to construct an American culture.

Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the History of the Book

Maya Merlob

2018

The history of the book is a relatively new field of studies which brings together a wide range of theoretical approaches to the production, consumption, and circulation of texts and, in a more recent development, their removal and disposal. With the book viewed as a thing, an object with a life of its own, scholars are beginning to pay attention to the various phases in a text’s ‘life’- birth, growth and death. Relying on this methodology, this course will explore texts produced in early America. We will ask ourselves how texts acquire cultural status in the new nation, how Americans are encouraged to participate in their production and consumption, and eventually we will delve into the particular ways in which textual meaning is discarded in the attempt to construct an American culture.

0626-2932-01

ספרות ולימודי מוגבלויות: מוגבלויות קוגניטיביות

Literature and Disability Studies: Cognitive Disabilities

ד"ר אלפרוביץ דלית

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

103

ד'

1200-1000

סמ' ב'

Literature and Disability Studies: Cognitive Disabilities

Dr. Dalit Alperovich

Course 626293201

Course description:

Disability Studies is a growing field which sheds light on the ways in which society constructs the boundaries of normalcy. This course examines literary representations of the more “hidden” disabilities – cognitive, intellectual and mental. In what ways does literature draw the boundaries of normalcy? How do definitions of disability change in different historical, political, social and cultural contexts? What is the relation between disability and identity politics in literature? How does literature give voice to the subjectivity of the disabled person and what are the ethical considerations of such representations? What functions do disabled characters serve in literary works? The course engages in these issues by closely examining literary works and by discussing theoretical and analytical essays that address these questions.

Course requirements:

A midterm paper – 35%

Three short forum assignments – 15%

A final exam – 50%

Primary works:

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003)

Daniel Keyes, “Flowers for Algernon” (1959)

Bernard Malamud, “Idiots First” (1961)

Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853)

Toni Morrison, “Recitatif” (1983)

Flannery O’Connor, “The Lame Shall Enter First” (1965)

Edgar Allen Poe, “The Black Cat” (1843)

Hisaye Yamamaoto, “The Legend of Miss Sasagawara” (1988)

Literature and Disability Studies: Cognitive Disabilities

Dr. Dalit Alperovich

Course 626293201

Course description:

Disability Studies is a growing field which sheds light on the ways in which society constructs the boundaries of normalcy. This course examines literary representations of the more “hidden” disabilities – cognitive, intellectual and mental. In what ways does literature draw the boundaries of normalcy? How do definitions of disability change in different historical, political, social and cultural contexts? What is the relation between disability and identity politics in literature? How does literature give voice to the subjectivity of the disabled person and what are the ethical considerations of such representations? What functions do disabled characters serve in literary works? The course engages in these issues by closely examining literary works and by discussing theoretical and analytical essays that address these questions.

Course requirements:

A midterm paper – 35%

Three short forum assignments – 15%

A final exam – 50%

Primary works:

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003)

Daniel Keyes, “Flowers for Algernon” (1959)

Bernard Malamud, “Idiots First” (1961)

Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853)

Toni Morrison, “Recitatif” (1983)

Flannery O’Connor, “The Lame Shall Enter First” (1965)

Edgar Allen Poe, “The Black Cat” (1843)

Hisaye Yamamaoto, “The Legend of Miss Sasagawara” (1988)

0626-2933-01

עלייתו של טראמפ ושובן של שנות ה - 80

Mourning? in America: the Rise of Trump and the Return of the 1980s

ד"ר פרומר יואב

שיעור

רוזנברג

205

א'

1600-1400

סמ' ב'

‘Mourning’ in America: The Rise of Trump and the Return of the 1980s

Yoav Fromer

MTV, Crazy hairdos, lame pop music and a smiling president: Scholars still consider the 1980s as a relatively benign period of national regeneration that solidified a conservative revolution. After the traumatic 1960s-1970s, many Americans agreed that, indeed, “It’s Morning in America” – as Ronald Reagan’s catchy reelection slogan put it. But the spectacular success of Trump three decades later forces us to reassess the import and impact of this rather misunderstood period: after all, Trump is also a quintessential product of the 1980s and therefore the context, problems, forces and failures that fueled his remarkable ascension may very well be found in the developments of this era. The course will reassess the 1980s through a variety of disciplines (history, literature, political science, film, music, TV) and explore Reaganomics and the financialization of the economy; the end of the Cold War; “Yuppie” consumer culture; Multiculturalism; the Crack Epidemic and mass incarceration of African Americans; Aids crisis; Anti-abortion movement; the rise of post-modernism and university "Canon Wars."

Mourning’ in America: The Rise of Trump and the Return of the 1980s

Yoav Fromer

MTV, Crazy hairdos, lame pop music and a smiling president: Scholars still consider the 1980s as a relatively benign period of national regeneration that solidified a conservative revolution. After the traumatic 1960s-1970s, many Americans agreed that, indeed, “It’s Morning in America” – as Ronald Reagan’s catchy reelection slogan put it. But the spectacular success of Trump three decades later forces us to reassess the import and impact of this rather misunderstood period: after all, Trump is also a quintessential product of the 1980s and therefore the context, problems, forces and failures that fueled his remarkable ascension may very well be found in the developments of this era. The course will reassess the 1980s through a variety of disciplines (history, literature, political science, film, music, TV) and explore Reaganomics and the financialization of the economy; the end of the Cold War; “Yuppie” consumer culture; Multiculturalism; the Crack Epidemic and mass incarceration of African Americans; Aids crisis; Anti-abortion movement; the rise of post-modernism and university "Canon Wars."

0626-2970-01

שירת הבארוק האנגלי

English Baroque Poetry

ד"ר ריזנר נועם

שיעור

רוזנברג

106

ב'

1200-1000

סמ' ב'

English Baroque Poetry – advanced course (pre-1800)

שירת הבארוק האנגלי - קורס מתקדם

This course will offer an overview of English poetry in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which can be classified as responding to what is now recognized as the Baroque movement in European art, as it spread from the counter-Reformation aesthetics of Rome, to similar artistic reactions across northern, Protestant Europe as well. The story of the rise and fall of the Baroque style in English poetry is also, therefore, the story of its age, which spans the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth. Hovering between what cultural historians have labelled as the High Renaissance and the Enlightenment, this was an age of uncertainties and turmoil which witnessed some of the most extreme upheavals in British culture - from the religious persecutions of the late Elizabethan age, through the civil war and interregnum, to the restoration, exclusion crisis, and the glorious revolution of 1688. The originator of the English Baroque in English verse is John Donne and we will take his body of poetic work, especially the Songs and Sonnets, as a starting point for this course. Beginning with Donne, we will then track the development of Baroque poetry throughout the seventeenth century by reading typical poems from a wide range of poets from the period, including Aemilia Lanyer, George Herbert, Thomas Carew, John Suckling, Richard Crashaw, John Cleveland, Richard Lovelace, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Traherne, John Wilmot the Earl of Rochester, and Thomas Heyrick, among others.

Primary texts: Weekly assigned readings of poems and other relevant texts to be posted on the course website.

Requirements: There will be a take-home midterm assignment (30% of grade), and a final exam (70%).

English Baroque Poetry – advanced course (pre-1800)

שירת הבארוק האנגלי - קורס מתקדם

This course will offer an overview of English poetry in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which can be classified as responding to what is now recognized as the Baroque movement in European art, as it spread from the counter-Reformation aesthetics of Rome, to similar artistic reactions across northern, Protestant Europe as well. The story of the rise and fall of the Baroque style in English poetry is also, therefore, the story of its age, which spans the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth. Hovering between what cultural historians have labelled as the High Renaissance and the Enlightenment, this was an age of uncertainties and turmoil which witnessed some of the most extreme upheavals in British culture - from the religious persecutions of the late Elizabethan age, through the civil war and interregnum, to the restoration, exclusion crisis, and the glorious revolution of 1688. The originator of the English Baroque in English verse is John Donne and we will take his body of poetic work, especially the Songs and Sonnets, as a starting point for this course. Beginning with Donne, we will then track the development of Baroque poetry throughout the seventeenth century by reading typical poems from a wide range of poets from the period, including Aemilia Lanyer, George Herbert, Thomas Carew, John Suckling, Richard Crashaw, John Cleveland, Richard Lovelace, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Traherne, John Wilmot the Earl of Rochester, and Thomas Heyrick, among others.

Primary texts: Weekly assigned readings of poems and other relevant texts to be posted on the course website.

Requirements: There will be a take-home midterm assignment (30% of grade), and a final exam (70%).

0626-3140-01

אזור הספר בספרות אמריקנית

The Frontier in American Fiction

ד"ר עברון ניר

סמינר

כיתות דן דוד

202

ד'

1400-1200

סמ' ב'

סמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

501

א'

1400-1200

סמ' ב'

Frederick Jackson Turner had famously argued that the distinctiveness of the American character is to be sought in the experience of the frontier. In the background of this statement by one of the nation’s most prominent 19th-century historians lay a large corpus of literary writing committed to the mythologizing of the frontier. This seminar will be devoted to the study of some of the most influential of these early frontier-myths, as well of later, more critical, renditions of the theme. We will seek to define the idea of the frontier, and ask about the different ways it has been used as a literary-cultural tool for handling the pressures of contradictions that have defined American history, from the Colonial Period to the present

The Frontier in American Literature אזור הספר בספרות אמריקנית

Dr. Nir Evron ד"ר ניר עברון

BA seminar סמינר בי. אי

Frederick Jackson Turner had famously argued that the distinctiveness of the American character is to be sought in the experience of the frontier. In the background of this statement by one of the nation’s most prominent 19th-century historians lay a large corpus of literary writing committed to the mythologizing of the frontier. This seminar will be devoted to the study of some of the most influential of these early frontier-myths, as well of later, more critical, renditions of the theme. We will seek to define the idea of the frontier, and ask about the different ways it has been used as a literary-cultural tool for handling the pressures of contradictions that have defined American history, from the Colonial Period to the present.

This seminar proceeds from a psychoanalytical Freudian-Lacanian position.

What is writing? The question of the written repeatedly leads Lacan to superlatives indexing a proximity to the impossible, in particular where its origin is concerned. That orthography exists at all, Lacan says, is the ‘most stupefying thing in the world.’ The answer Lacan provides to this question in his early teaching, in which the written letter is considered a component of the unconscious signifier, has an unspoken geneaology in an ancient tradition of the thinking of writing. A major textual site where this geneaology unfolds is those old manuals of rhetoric which Lacan in his early teaching points out as part of the lineage and legacy of psychoanalysis. The rhetorical tradition features texts that take the form of those narratives that appear in human history, Lacan teaches in The Relation to the Object, to explicate ‘the invention of the great human resources,’ in particular those connected to ‘the power of signification,’ that is to say, of myths. Ancient myths of the invention of writing, answers to the impossible question of its origin, relate it to a category that would become central in Freudian psychoanalysis, that of memory. In the seminar, we will read such myths of the origin of memory as writing and of painting as writing, as well as myths of the invention of rhetoric as the institution of civilization, which find their Freudian isomorph in Totem and Taboo. In reading these texts, we will consider such questions as the relation between writing and burial, writing and loss, writing and primordial guilt.

Texts include: extracts from Cicero, De oratore, Pliny, Natural History, George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique; Freud, Totem andTaboo; Levi Strauss, The Structural Study of Myth,”; Lacan, extracts from Seminar 4: TheRelation to the Object,Seminar 6: Desire and its Interpretation, Seminar 7: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Seminar 17: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis.

This seminar proceeds from a psychoanalytical Freudian-Lacanian position.

What is writing? The question of the written repeatedly leads Lacan to superlatives indexing a proximity to the impossible, in particular where its origin is concerned. That orthography exists at all, Lacan says, is the ‘most stupefying thing in the world.’ The answer Lacan provides to this question in his early teaching, in which the written letter is considered a component of the unconscious signifier, has an unspoken geneaology in an ancient tradition of the thinking of writing. A major textual site where this geneaology unfolds is those old manuals of rhetoric which Lacan in his early teaching points out as part of the lineage and legacy of psychoanalysis. The rhetorical tradition features texts that take the form of those narratives that appear in human history, Lacan teaches in The Relation to the Object, to explicate ‘the invention of the great human resources,’ in particular those connected to ‘the power of signification,’ that is to say, of myths. Ancient myths of the invention of writing, answers to the impossible question of its origin, relate it to a category that would become central in Freudian psychoanalysis, that of memory. In the seminar, we will read such myths of the origin of memory as writing and of painting as writing, as well as myths of the invention of rhetoric as the institution of civilization, which find their Freudian isomorph in Totem and Taboo. In reading these texts, we will consider such questions as the relation between writing and burial, writing and loss, writing and primordial guilt.

Texts include: extracts from Cicero, De oratore, Pliny, Natural History, George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique; Freud, Totem andTaboo; Levi Strauss, The Structural Study of Myth,”; Lacan, extracts from Seminar 4: TheRelation to the Object,Seminar 6: Desire and its Interpretation, Seminar 7: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Seminar 17: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis.

Horror is both a sensation and the name of an extraordinarily popular literary and cinematic genre. In this seminar, we will trace horror’s emergence from the Gothic novel, its subsequent development in the 20th century, and its contemporary explosive growth. We will trace the history of the Gothic novel from Ann Radcliffe to Bram Stoker, Stephen King and beyond. Born out of the Romantic revolt against the Enlightenment, the Gothic novel articulated the hidden fears and desires of Victorian culture. Later on, literary horror became a way to struggle with the multiple shocks of modernity and its reinvention of subjectivity, gender and sexuality. For more than a hundred years, horror has been one of the most popular and most reviled literary (and eventually cinematic) genres, challenging realism with its sensational plots, melodramatic characters, supernatural invasions, monsters, zombies and vampires.

We will also study the narrative conventions of the Gothic, paying particular attention to its setting (the castle, the haunted house, the beleaguered city). We will read novels and short stories by Ann Radcliffe, Bram Stoker (Dracula), Algernon Blackwood, Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House), Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Tim Lebbon and others. A detailed syllabus will be posted before the beginning of the semester.

Requirements: class participation, two short papers, the final paper.

From Gothic to Horror

BA Seminar

Prof. Elana Gomel

Horror is both a sensation and the name of an extraordinarily popular literary and cinematic genre. In this seminar, we will trace horror’s emergence from the Gothic novel, its subsequent development in the 20th century, and its contemporary explosive growth. We will trace the history of the Gothic novel from Ann Radcliffe to Bram Stoker, Stephen King and beyond. Born out of the Romantic revolt against the Enlightenment, the Gothic novel articulated the hidden fears and desires of Victorian culture. Later on, literary horror became a way to struggle with the multiple shocks of modernity and its reinvention of subjectivity, gender and sexuality. For more than a hundred years, horror has been one of the most popular and most reviled literary (and eventually cinematic) genres, challenging realism with its sensational plots, melodramatic characters, supernatural invasions, monsters, zombies and vampires.

We will also study the narrative conventions of the Gothic, paying particular attention to its setting (the castle, the haunted house, the beleaguered city). We will read novels and short stories by Ann Radcliffe, Bram Stoker (Dracula), Algernon Blackwood, Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House), Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Tim Lebbon and others. A detailed syllabus will be posted before the beginning of the semester.

Requirements: class participation, two short papers, the final paper.

0626-3806-01

שייקספיר בקולנוע

Cinematic Shakespeare

ד"ר ריזנר נועם

סמינר

גילמן

449

ב'

1400-1200

סמ' ב'

סמינר

גילמן

449

ה'

1400-1200

סמ' ב'

Cinematic Shakespeare - BA Seminar

שייקספיר בקולנוע – סמינר BA

From the first invention of the cinematograph camera and the emergence of the new medium of silent film in the 19th century, filmmakers were drawn to Shakespearean drama as lofty material for cinematic adaptation. With well over 400 feature-length cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays since the invention of cinema, Shakespeare is the most ‘adapted’ author in the world, in any language. The relationship of cinema to Shakespeare is indeed a complicated love-affair that spans the 20th century and continues to inspire new films and film adaptations to this very day, now in television, digital and online media as well, including comic and animation (see for example the BBC’s Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, 1992-1994, or the Anglo-Japanese Manga Shakespeare). In this seminar, we will explore this complex and fascinating relationship between Shakespeare and some of his most interesting cinematic adapters, discussing several key Shakespearean plays and in each case two exemplary films the play in question inspired - from major cinematic English-speaking classics to world-cinema, fringe, and the avant-garde. Our approach will always be a double one, moving from a discussion about the original play in theatrical performance to its cinematic adaptations, combining close textual analysis with cinematic analysis. Throughout, we will try and address a number of aesthetic, theoretical and cultural questions: what are the challenges when adapting Shakespeare to the screen? How do different filmmakers respond to what they recognise as the central themes and motifs of a given play? What gets lost in the adaptation of a play from theatre to screen? What is gained? Can cinematic adaptations shed new or different light on a play which a theatrical performance could not? What are the wider aesthetic, ethical and cultural implications of translating poetry into imagery, and of making Shakespeare come alive so that the world is no longer a ‘stage’, but a screen of moving images subject to frames, editing, and cinematic points of views? How, finally, do filmmakers position their own art in relation to the mercurial poetic and dramatic genius of Shakespeare?

Primary texts and films: the seminar will focus on the following Shakespearean plays and their cinematic adaptations across different periods and cultural moments: Romeo and Juliet and the film adaptations of Franco Zeffirelli (1968) and Buz Luhrmann (1996); Hamlet and the film adaptations of Laurence Olivier (1948) and Kenneth Branagh (1996); Othello and the film adaptations of George Cukor (A Double Life, 1947) and Orson Welles (1951); Macbeth and the film adaptations of Akira Kurosawa (Throne of Blood, 1957) and Roman Polanski (1971); The Tempest and the film adaptations of Peter Greenaway (Prospero’s Books, 1991) and Julie Taymor (2010). * At this stage, this is a tentative syllabus, and may be subject to change.

*Class discussion will move between readings in the texts of the plays and the viewing of short clips from the assigned films. It is incumbent on registered students to read the plays and watch the films in advance of class discussion. Where and when possible I will organize group screenings of key films outside class hours. DVDs of the films will be available for student borrowing. The recommended edition of the plays is the Shakespeare Arden series. It is compulsory to read the plays before they are discussed in class and always to have a text in class for reference.

From the first invention of the cinematograph camera and the emergence of the new medium of silent film in the 19th century, filmmakers were drawn to Shakespearean drama as lofty material for cinematic adaptation. With well over 400 feature-length cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays since the invention of cinema, Shakespeare is the most ‘adapted’ author in the world, in any language. The relationship of cinema to Shakespeare is indeed a complicated love-affair that spans the 20th century and continues to inspire new films and film adaptations to this very day, now in television, digital and online media as well, including comic and animation (see for example the BBC’s Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, 1992-1994, or the Anglo-Japanese Manga Shakespeare). In this seminar, we will explore this complex and fascinating relationship between Shakespeare and some of his most interesting cinematic adapters, discussing several key Shakespearean plays and in each case two exemplary films the play in question inspired - from major cinematic English-speaking classics to world-cinema, fringe, and the avant-garde. Our approach will always be a double one, moving from a discussion about the original play in theatrical performance to its cinematic adaptations, combining close textual analysis with cinematic analysis. Throughout, we will try and address a number of aesthetic, theoretical and cultural questions: what are the challenges when adapting Shakespeare to the screen? How do different filmmakers respond to what they recognise as the central themes and motifs of a given play? What gets lost in the adaptation of a play from theatre to screen? What is gained? Can cinematic adaptations shed new or different light on a play which a theatrical performance could not? What are the wider aesthetic, ethical and cultural implications of translating poetry into imagery, and of making Shakespeare come alive so that the world is no longer a ‘stage’, but a screen of moving images subject to frames, editing, and cinematic points of views? How, finally, do filmmakers position their own art in relation to the mercurial poetic and dramatic genius of Shakespeare?

Primary texts and films: the seminar will focus on the following Shakespearean plays and their cinematic adaptations across different periods and cultural moments: Romeo and Juliet and the film adaptations of Franco Zeffirelli (1968) and Buz Luhrmann (1996); Hamlet and the film adaptations of Laurence Olivier (1948) and Kenneth Branagh (1996); Othello and the film adaptations of George Cukor (A Double Life, 1947) and Orson Welles (1951); Macbeth and the film adaptations of Akira Kurosawa (Throne of Blood, 1957) and Roman Polanski (1971); The Tempest and the film adaptations of Peter Greenaway (Prospero’s Books, 1991) and Julie Taymor (2010). * At this stage, this is a tentative syllabus, and may be subject to change.

*Class discussion will move between readings in the texts of the plays and the viewing of short clips from the assigned films. It is incumbent on registered students to read the plays and watch the films in advance of class discussion. Where and when possible I will organize group screenings of key films outside class hours. DVDs of the films will be available for student borrowing. The recommended edition of the plays is the Shakespeare Arden series. It is compulsory to read the plays before they are discussed in class and always to have a text in class for reference.

Many African American novels take place in New York City, and have been written by authors who have lived within the metropolis. A hub of African American culture from the early twentieth century onward, New York serves more than a backdrop for these narratives. This seminar will explore ways in which cityscapes (spaces, places, and cultures) inform the novels and shape their meanings: ideologically, conceptually, and metaphorically.

Many African American novels take place in New York City, and have been written by authors who have lived within the metropolis. A hub of African American culture from the early twentieth century onward, New York serves more than a backdrop for these narratives. This seminar will explore ways in which cityscapes (spaces, places, and cultures) inform the novels and shape their meanings: ideologically, conceptually, and metaphorically.

This seminar will explore the contested and convoluted legacy of the American Civil War, from the end of the conflict in 1865 to the Civil Rights Movement a hundred years later. By examining a wide range of historical, literary and visual texts, we will analyze the reasons behind the war’s unmatched presence in American public life and its consequences for politics, society and culture over the years.

0626-4223-01

פרוורסיה של הפואטי

The Perversity of the Poetic

פרופ זיסר שיר-לי

סמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

105

ב'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

סמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

105

ה'

1200-1000

סמ' א'

The Perversity of the Poetic – MA Seminar

This seminar proceeds from a psychoanalytical Freudian-Lacanian position.

The question of the specificity of the poetic has preoccupied thinkers on language from at least as early as Aristotle’s Poetics and as late as Heidegger’s essay on “Language,” its discussions reaching an apex in formalist and structuralist literary theory, for instance in the work of Viktor Shklovsky, Roman Jakobson, and Jan Mukarovky. Characteristic of these discussion is an opposition between poetic language and what Mukarovsky calls “standard language” and Aristotle – the kurion or “common.” This characteristic of theorizations of the poetic as a deviation from a common or universal standard finds its isomorph in one of Freud’s most foundational discoveries, first formulated in the Three Essays on the Theory ofSexuality of 1905: the finding that sexuality, operative from infancy onwards, is the isolation of a portion of the organism and its sublation from a universal ego-preserving function to the function of satisfaction alone, that is to say, that sexuality is, to follow the title of the inaugural among Freud’s Three Essays, constitutively aberrant, polymorphously perverse with respect to the universal of anatomy as well as, of course to any norm. What makes speech poetic, Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky famously writes in his programmatic "Art as Technique," is its impeding of, ob-jecting to sense; that is, its abrogation of the lexical to the profit of the formal. It is thus, Shklovsky writes, that the poetic "gives satisfaction," that is -- coincides with the aim of the drive. The seminar will interrogate the consequences of the isomorphism between the structure of the poetic as deviation and the structure of sexuality as perverse, as well as the relations between perversion as a particular subjective structure (distinct from neurosis and psychosis) and theorizations of the poetic, most notably those of Roman Jakobson and Michael Riffaterre that explicitly gesture towards the poetic object and the object of perversion par excellence: the fetish. It will also conside the relation between the poetic and the two variable components of the drive: the object by means of which it achieves its aim of satisfaction, and the erogenous zone around which it turns, so as to consider the question of what I call rhetorical erotogenicity.

This seminar proceeds from a psychoanalytical Freudian-Lacanian position.

The question of the specificity of the poetic has preoccupied thinkers on language from at least as early as Aristotle’s Poetics and as late as Heidegger’s essay on “Language,” its discussions reaching an apex in formalist and structuralist literary theory, for instance in the work of Viktor Shklovsky, Roman Jakobson, and Jan Mukarovky. Characteristic of these discussion is an opposition between poetic language and what Mukarovsky calls “standard language” and Aristotle – the kurion or “common.” This characteristic of theorizations of the poetic as a deviation from a common or universal standard finds its isomorph in one of Freud’s most foundational discoveries, first formulated in the Three Essays on the Theory ofSexuality of 1905: the finding that sexuality, operative from infancy onwards, is the isolation of a portion of the organism and its sublation from a universal ego-preserving function to the function of satisfaction alone, that is to say, that sexuality is, to follow the title of the inaugural among Freud’s Three Essays, constitutively aberrant, polymorphously perverse with respect to the universal of anatomy as well as, of course to any norm. What makes speech poetic, Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky famously writes in his programmatic "Art as Technique," is its impeding of, ob-jecting to sense; that is, its abrogation of the lexical to the profit of the formal. It is thus, Shklovsky writes, that the poetic "gives satisfaction," that is -- coincides with the aim of the drive. The seminar will interrogate the consequences of the isomorphism between the structure of the poetic as deviation and the structure of sexuality as perverse, as well as the relations between perversion as a particular subjective structure (distinct from neurosis and psychosis) and theorizations of the poetic, most notably those of Roman Jakobson and Michael Riffaterre that explicitly gesture towards the poetic object and the object of perversion par excellence: the fetish. It will also conside the relation between the poetic and the two variable components of the drive: the object by means of which it achieves its aim of satisfaction, and the erogenous zone around which it turns, so as to consider the question of what I call rhetorical erotogenicity.

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, one of the most popular form of

theatrical entertainment on the London commercial stage was the revenge drama of blood. Many of the revenge plays which were so popular in Elizabethan and Jacobean times

seem distasteful and crude to modern tastes, and most of them are justly obscured by the

towering fame of Shakespeare’s Hamlet – perhaps the most famous revenge drama (or anti-revenge drama) of all time. However, Shakespeare conceived of Hamlet within the evolving popular conventions of the genre, and in this seminar we will study a range of contemporary revenge plays as we come to terms with the complex world of the renaissance

‘revenger’ – a dark, turbulent world of passion, violence, and extreme pathos. Moreover, we will try and identify and understand the particular mode of theatre revenge drama generates, and reflect on its unique forms of engagement with its intended audience, and the corresponding sense of enjoyment it generates. We will try and determine why were these plays so popular? What was their special appeal and underlying ethical effects in performance? What are the various philosophical, theological, and theoretical questions underpinning the concept of revenge explored in these plays, and how do different dramatists transform conceptually and poetically the impossible ethical plight of the revenger into cathartic theatrical spectacle? What finally is the appeal of these plays today, and what are some of the cultural and ethical elements of the genre that carry over into modern treatments of revenge in fiction, film and television?

Primary texts: In order to pursue these many interrelated question, the seminar will focus on the close textual reading and analysis of a selection of plays from the period best representing the unique sub-genre of English renaissance revenge drama: Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger's Tragedy, Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy, George Chapman’s The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore. Wider suggested reading includes: Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness and Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling.

* A list of editions and edited anthologies of revenge plays for use in this course will be provided on the full seminar syllabus and circulated to registered students in advance of term.

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, one of the most popular form of

theatrical entertainment on the London commercial stage was the revenge drama of blood. Many of the revenge plays which were so popular in Elizabethan and Jacobean times

seem distasteful and crude to modern tastes, and most of them are justly obscured by the

towering fame of Shakespeare’s Hamlet – perhaps the most famous revenge drama (or anti-revenge drama) of all time. However, Shakespeare conceived of Hamlet within the evolving popular conventions of the genre, and in this seminar we will study a range of contemporary revenge plays as we come to terms with the complex world of the renaissance

‘revenger’ – a dark, turbulent world of passion, violence, and extreme pathos. Moreover, we will try and identify and understand the particular mode of theatre revenge drama generates, and reflect on its unique forms of engagement with its intended audience, and the corresponding sense of enjoyment it generates. We will try and determine why were these plays so popular? What was their special appeal and underlying ethical effects in performance? What are the various philosophical, theological, and theoretical questions underpinning the concept of revenge explored in these plays, and how do different dramatists transform conceptually and poetically the impossible ethical plight of the revenger into cathartic theatrical spectacle? What finally is the appeal of these plays today, and what are some of the cultural and ethical elements of the genre that carry over into modern treatments of revenge in fiction, film and television?

Primary texts: In order to pursue these many interrelated question, the seminar will focus on the close textual reading and analysis of a selection of plays from the period best representing the unique sub-genre of English renaissance revenge drama: Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger's Tragedy, Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy, George Chapman’s The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore. Wider suggested reading includes: Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness and Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling.

* A list of editions and edited anthologies of revenge plays for use in this course will be provided on the full seminar syllabus and circulated to registered students in advance of term.

Poetry is often said to be notoriously difficult, and some claim that its difficulty is the reason for its lack of popular appeal. But what does it mean that a poem is difficult, and what is it about the language of poetry that seems to encourage this difficulty? These questions go to the heart of discussions not just about poetics but about the ethical value of poetry. They also have to do with the issue of communication: what, if anything, should/can poetry communicate and what are the perils of ascribing to poetry a communicative function? In this seminar we will read theoretical texts on poetic language, on what makes poetry poetry and what makes poetry difficult. We will also be close reading and close listening to a wide range of poems, both difficult and extremely easy and accessible. A major focus of the seminar will be on the practice of carefully reading and misreading poems, and so it is especially recommended for students with an interest in furthering their engagement with poetry.

Poetic Language Problems (MA Seminar)

בעיות בשפה הפואטית

Poetry is often said to be notoriously difficult, and some claim that its difficulty is the reason for its lack of popular appeal. But what does it mean that a poem is difficult, and what is it about the language of poetry that seems to encourage this difficulty? These questions go to the heart of discussions not just about poetics but about the ethical value of poetry. They also have to do with the issue of communication: what, if anything, should/can poetry communicate and what are the perils of ascribing to poetry a communicative function? In this seminar we will read theoretical texts on poetic language, on what makes poetry poetry and what makes poetry difficult. We will also be close reading and close listening to a wide range of poems, both difficult and extremely easy and accessible. A major focus of the seminar will be on the practice of carefully reading and misreading poems, and so it is especially recommended for students with an interest in furthering their engagement with poetry.

0626-4802-01

תיאוריה ומתודולוגיה

Theory and Methodology

ד"ר סטבסקי יהונתן יוסף

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

105

ב'

1200-1000

סמ' ב'

שיעור

ביה"ס לשפות

105

ה'

1200-1000

סמ' ב'

Theory and Methodology / תיאוריה ומתודולוגיה

Dr. Jonathan Stavsky

Course Description

The past few decades have seen the rise of radically new approaches to the study of literature, from textual materialism to digital humanities, from cognitive poetics to transnationalism. At the same time, established theoretical fields such as feminism or narratology have evolved in response to challenges brought on by the profound shifts that have been taking place in society, technology, and global politics. Others long considered out of date, for example formalism, are making a comeback. What possibilities of reading have these methodologies opened up? How are they redefining the object of our study? What are their limitations?

This course aims to expose beginning MA students to some recent developments in literary theory while training you in conducting graduate-level research. You will learn how to uncover hidden assumptions, blind spots, and ideological blinkers in other people’s work; how to become more aware of your own presuppositions; how to stake out an informed theoretical position; and how to bring theory and criticism into dialogue with literary texts. The last part of the course will take the form of a graduate writing workshop where you will practice conceptualizing and planning a long research project (an MA seminar paper or thesis) by putting together a proposal that employs the advanced skills you have acquired during the semester.

By the end of the course, students who have successfully completed its requirements should be better equipped to excel in their MA studies.

Theory and Methodology / תיאוריה ומתודולוגיה

Dr. Jonathan Stavsky

Course Description

The past few decades have seen the rise of radically new approaches to the study of literature, from textual materialism to digital humanities, from cognitive poetics to transnationalism. At the same time, established theoretical fields such as feminism or narratology have evolved in response to challenges brought on by the profound shifts that have been taking place in society, technology, and global politics. Others long considered out of date, for example formalism, are making a comeback. What possibilities of reading have these methodologies opened up? How are they redefining the object of our study? What are their limitations?

This course aims to expose beginning MA students to some recent developments in literary theory while training you in conducting graduate-level research. You will learn how to uncover hidden assumptions, blind spots, and ideological blinkers in other people’s work; how to become more aware of your own presuppositions; how to stake out an informed theoretical position; and how to bring theory and criticism into dialogue with literary texts. The last part of the course will take the form of a graduate writing workshop where you will practice conceptualizing and planning a long research project (an MA seminar paper or thesis) by putting together a proposal that employs the advanced skills you have acquired during the semester.

By the end of the course, students who have successfully completed its requirements should be better equipped to excel in their MA studies.

0626-4803-01

אוטופיה ודיסטופיה

Utopia and Dystopia

פרופ גומל אילנה

סמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

105

א'

1400-1200

סמ' ב'

סמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

501

ד'

1400-1200

סמ' ב'

Utopia and Dystopia

MA Seminar

Prof. Elana Gomel

How can we imagine the future?

Representations of a perfect society were always part of the Western literary and philosophical traditions, starting with Plato’s Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia. But with the rise of the idea of progress, utopia became temporal rather than spatial: a bright future, in which all the ills of the present shall be overcome. Utopia signified the end of history and the establishment of a perfect, just and equal society. At the same time, utopia gave rise to its dark twin: dystopia. Utopia and dystopia are the same genre seen from different points of view: your heaven is my hell, and vice versa.

Utopia is not merely a literary genre. It is the foundation of many millennial and apocalyptic ideologies, such as Communism and Nazism. The 20th century was a grand age of utopian projects that turned into nightmares of violence.

In this seminar we will discuss literary utopias/dystopias, starting with More and ending with Hunger Games. Among the questions asked is the connection between utopia and apocalypse; the notion of the utopian subject (or New Man); the narratology of utopian literature; and the rising popularity of dystopia today.

We will be reading literary utopias/dystopias, including but not limited to, H. G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come, George Orwell’s 1984, Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, Susan Collins’ Hunger Games and others. We will also study utopian criticism and theory, including texts by Fredric Jameson, Michel Foucault and others. A detailed syllabus will be posted before the beginning of the semester.

Requirements: class participation, two short papers, a class presentation, the final project.

MA Seminar

Prof. Elana Gomel

How can we imagine the future?

Representations of a perfect society were always part of the Western literary and philosophical traditions, starting with Plato’s Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia. But with the rise of the idea of progress, utopia became temporal rather than spatial: a bright future, in which all the ills of the present shall be overcome. Utopia signified the end of history and the establishment of a perfect, just and equal society. At the same time, utopia gave rise to its dark twin: dystopia. Utopia and dystopia are the same genre seen from different points of view: your heaven is my hell, and vice versa.

Utopia is not merely a literary genre. It is the foundation of many millennial and apocalyptic ideologies, such as Communism and Nazism. The 20th century was a grand age of utopian projects that turned into nightmares of violence.

In this seminar we will discuss literary utopias/dystopias, starting with More and ending with Hunger Games. Among the questions asked is the connection between utopia and apocalypse; the notion of the utopian subject (or New Man); the narratology of utopian literature; and the rising popularity of dystopia today.

We will be reading literary utopias/dystopias, including but not limited to, H. G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come, George Orwell’s 1984, Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, Susan Collins’ Hunger Games and others. We will also study utopian criticism and theory, including texts by Fredric Jameson, Michel Foucault and others. A detailed syllabus will be posted before the beginning of the semester.

Requirements: class participation, two short papers, a class presentation, the final project.

0626-4804-01

תצורות כתיבה במנגנון הנפשי

Forms of Psychic Writing

פרופ זיסר שיר-לי

סמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

101

ב'

1400-1200

סמ' ב'

סמינר

ביה"ס לשפות

101

ה'

1400-1200

סמ' ב'

Forms of Psychic Writing – MA Seminar

The seminar is taught from a psychoanalytical, Freudian-Lacanian position.

In one of the foundational texts of psychoanalysis, Letter 52 to Wilhelm Fliess, Freud refers to the constituents of the unconscious, none other than representations that are also the constituents of language and literature, as present in the psychic apparatus ‘not once but several times over,’ that is, as subject to what he calls ‘retranscription.’ Nor is the reference to components of the psychic apparatus as instances of a writing peculiar to this early Freudian text. Every time Freud speaks about the processes of the psychic apparatus, Lacan says in the sixth seminar on Desire and its Interpretation, he uses terms such as ‘niederschreiben’ [underwriting], has recourse to the language of what is inscribed and imprinted. The psychic writing as Freud theorizes it in the course of his teaching takes various forms, foundational of different functions both in the psychic apparatus and in psychoanalytical technique, including “character” (as distinct from symptom), the “unary trait,” the “stereotype plate” operative in love life, of which transference in analysis is a version, the unconscious “memory trace,” the dream as a “rebus,” the hysterical symptom as, in Lacan’s words “written in the sand of the flesh.” Interestingly, these forms of psychic writing that is at the same time a writ(h)ing, involving the paroxysm of the body that suffers and enjoys, have the same structure of two ways of insculpture Renaissance art theorist Leon Batista Alberti delineates in his De Statua: the via di porre or way of addition and the via dilevare or way of subtraction. What is the structure of each of these forms of psychic writing? Precisely what addition and subtraction do they involve? What can they teach us about the possible uses of poesis with respect to the exacerbation or limitation of the suffering ecstasy that Lacan calls jouissance, which animates literary creation and which leads subjects to analysis? About the relation between literary character, character as letter, and character in the psychoanalytical sense? What might we learn from them about the possible place of desire in language? The seminar will interrogate these questions through a close reading of relevant texts by Freud and Lacan, and a consideration of relevant literary examples.

Texts include:

Freud: Letter 52, Project for a Scientific Psychology, The Interpretation ofDreams, Studies on Hysteria, “Character and Anal Erotism,” “Some Character Types met with in Psychoanalytic Work,” “Psychopathic Characters on the Stage,” “The Dynamics of Transference,” “Identification” (in Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego);

Derrida: “Freud and the Scene of Writing,” Of Grammatology;

Lacan: “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious,” “Lituraterre,” “Geneva Lecture of the Symptom,” extracts from Seminar 9: Identification, Seminar 14: The Logic of Phantasy, Seminar 16: From the Other to the other.

The seminar is taught from a psychoanalytical, Freudian-Lacanian position.

In one of the foundational texts of psychoanalysis, Letter 52 to Wilhelm Fliess, Freud refers to the constituents of the unconscious, none other than representations that are also the constituents of language and literature, as present in the psychic apparatus ‘not once but several times over,’ that is, as subject to what he calls ‘retranscription.’ Nor is the reference to components of the psychic apparatus as instances of a writing peculiar to this early Freudian text. Every time Freud speaks about the processes of the psychic apparatus, Lacan says in the sixth seminar on Desire and its Interpretation, he uses terms such as ‘niederschreiben’ [underwriting], has recourse to the language of what is inscribed and imprinted. The psychic writing as Freud theorizes it in the course of his teaching takes various forms, foundational of different functions both in the psychic apparatus and in psychoanalytical technique, including “character” (as distinct from symptom), the “unary trait,” the “stereotype plate” operative in love life, of which transference in analysis is a version, the unconscious “memory trace,” the dream as a “rebus,” the hysterical symptom as, in Lacan’s words “written in the sand of the flesh.” Interestingly, these forms of psychic writing that is at the same time a writ(h)ing, involving the paroxysm of the body that suffers and enjoys, have the same structure of two ways of insculpture Renaissance art theorist Leon Batista Alberti delineates in his De Statua: the via di porre or way of addition and the via dilevare or way of subtraction. What is the structure of each of these forms of psychic writing? Precisely what addition and subtraction do they involve? What can they teach us about the possible uses of poesis with respect to the exacerbation or limitation of the suffering ecstasy that Lacan calls jouissance, which animates literary creation and which leads subjects to analysis? About the relation between literary character, character as letter, and character in the psychoanalytical sense? What might we learn from them about the possible place of desire in language? The seminar will interrogate these questions through a close reading of relevant texts by Freud and Lacan, and a consideration of relevant literary examples.

Texts include:

Freud: Letter 52, Project for a Scientific Psychology, The Interpretation ofDreams, Studies on Hysteria, “Character and Anal Erotism,” “Some Character Types met with in Psychoanalytic Work,” “Psychopathic Characters on the Stage,” “The Dynamics of Transference,” “Identification” (in Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego);

Derrida: “Freud and the Scene of Writing,” Of Grammatology;

Lacan: “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious,” “Lituraterre,” “Geneva Lecture of the Symptom,” extracts from Seminar 9: Identification, Seminar 14: The Logic of Phantasy, Seminar 16: From the Other to the other.

Since its inception during the Enlightenment, the concept of “Human Rights” has been tethered to literary form. Indeed, as scholars now frequently argue, literary expression was crucial in generating, spreading and refining the idea that all humans are entitled to fundamental rights and freedoms. At the same time, literature and other cultural genres and media allow us to understand some of the vexed complexities and limitations of the discourse of human rights as it has been shaped—primarily in law and politics—over the past two centuries.

This seminar will begin by analyzing some of the key philosophical and legal texts that gave articulation to “human rights” (among them essays by Kant and Rousseau, the US Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and by surveying recent work by literary scholars on the topic (e.g., by Lynn Hunt and Joseph Slaughter). We will then zoom in on primary works from a variety of genres and media: novels, poems, graphic novels, films, in order to explore the intricate relation between aesthetic form and human-rights politics and ethics.

Texts: A full reading list will be published before the beginning of the second semester.

Requirements: Attendance and active participation in discussion; reading and short preparation assignment for each weekly meeting; short presentations; final paper.

Literature and Human Rights

MA seminar

Prof. Milette Shamir

ספרות וזכויות אדם

סמינר מ"א

פרופ' מלאת שמיר

Since its inception during the Enlightenment, the concept of “Human Rights” has been tethered to literary form. Indeed, as scholars now frequently argue, literary expression was crucial in generating, spreading and refining the idea that all humans are entitled to fundamental rights and freedoms. At the same time, literature and other cultural genres and media allow us to understand some of the vexed complexities and limitations of the discourse of human rights as it has been shaped—primarily in law and politics—over the past two centuries.

This seminar will begin by analyzing some of the key philosophical and legal texts that gave articulation to “human rights” (among them essays by Kant and Rousseau, the US Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and by surveying recent work by literary scholars on the topic (e.g., by Lynn Hunt and Joseph Slaughter). We will then zoom in on primary works from a variety of genres and media: novels, poems, graphic novels, films, in order to explore the intricate relation between aesthetic form and human-rights politics and ethics.

Texts: A full reading list will be published before the beginning of the second semester.

Requirements: Attendance and active participation in discussion; reading and short preparation assignment for each weekly meeting; short presentations; final paper.